October 2011 | Linux Blog

Install Latest Versions and New Applications using GetDeb under Ubuntu

GetDeb is an unofficial project with the mission to provide the latest open source and freeware applications for the current Ubuntu Linux release, in an easy to install manner.

The GetDeb repository extends the official repositories by providing latest versions and new applications. Unlike the official packages, GetDeb packages do not have a predefined release schedule - new software versions are provided as they become available from their authors. There is a short and limited testing phase instead of a full testing cycle to ensure packaging quality, however it is less strict than Ubuntu's official requirements.

You may also be interested on the UbuntuBackports project. It has a limited scope compared to GetDeb but the advantage of being an Ubuntu official project.

Visual Real-Time Apache Log Analyzer - GoAccess

GoAccess is an open source real-time Apache log analyzer and interactive viewer that runs in a terminal in *nix systems. It provides fast and valuable HTTP statistics for system administrators that require a visual server report on the fly.

Essentially, the way GoAccess works is that it will parse the well-known Apache access log file, from there, GoAccess will collect data from the parsed log and it will display it to the console or the X terminal. The collected information or generated reports will be displayed to the user/sysadmin in a visual/interactive window. Reports include:
* General Statistics, bandwidth etc.
* Top Visitors
* Requested files
* Requested static files, images, swf, js, etc.
* Referrers URLs
* 404 or Not Found
* Operating Systems
* Browsers and Spiders
* Hosts, Reverse DNS, IP Location
* HTTP Status Codes
* Referring Sites
* Keyphrases
* Different Color Schemes
* Unlimited log file size

Multimedia (MP3, MPEG-4, AVI, DiVX, etc.) support in Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot)

Why doesn’t Ubuntu support MP3 ‘out of the box’?

Ubuntu cannot include support for MP3 or DVD video playback or recording. MP3 formats are patented, and the patent holders have not provided the necessary licenses. Ubuntu also excludes other multimedia software due to patent, copyright, or license restrictions, such as Adobe Flash Player and RealNetworks RealPlayer.

That doesn’t mean you can’t play .mp3 files in Ubuntu , it just takes a bit of work (not much).

Follow these instructions to get mp3 and other multimedia support on your Ubuntu 11.10.

Tool for Detecting Memory Management Problems in Programs - Valgrind

Valgrind is a powerful tool for detecting memory management problems in programs. The kinds of problems it can detect are often very difficult to find by other means and often cause difficult to diagnose crashes. Valgrind can be used with existing executables without recompiling or relinking, although the output it produces will be much more useful if you have compiled with the -g flag.

Valgrind Capabilities
Valgrind is basically an x86 emulator that checks all reads and writes of memory, intercepts all calls to allocate and deallocate memory. The memcheck tool of valgrind (which is the main tool and the only one covered in this chapter) can detect the following:

* Use of uninitialized memory
* Reading/writing memory after it has been free'd
* Reading/writing off the end of malloc'd blocks
* Reading/writing inappropriate areas below the stack.
* Memory leaks
* Mismatched use of malloc/new/new[] vs free/delete/delete[]
* Overlapping src and dst pointers in memcpy() and related functions
* Doubly freed memory
* Passing unaddressable bytes to a system call

Graphical CD/DVD Image (ISO file) Editor - ISO Master

ISO Master is an easy to use GUI CD image editor for Linux, BSD, and Windows. Basically, you can use this program to extract files from an ISO, add files to an ISO, and create bootable ISOs, all in a graphical user interface.

ISO Master can open both ISO and NRG files, but can only save as ISO. It is based on bkisofs, a library for reading, modifying, and writing ISO images.

ISO Master features:
* Display file/directory contents of the image and filesystem in two panels and be able to navigate them.
* Display file sizes for files on image/filesystem.
* Sort by name or by size
* Select any number of items in the file browsers.
* Extract selected from image to the filesystem
* Delete selected from image.

Windows FAT16 / FAT32 FileSystem Resizer - Fatresize

Fatresize is a command line tool for non-destructive resizing of MS Windows FAT16 / FAT32 file systems. It is based on the GNU Parted library. The main target of the project is to be used with the EVMS FAT plugin.

Fatresize Installation:
Open the terminal and type following command to install Fatresize:

sudo apt-get install fatresize

Using Fatresize:
Fatresize follow the usual GNU command line syntax, with long options starting with two dashes (`-'). A summary of options is included below.

Utilities for Making and Checking MS-DOS FAT Filesystems

The dosfstools package includes the mkdosfs (aka mkfs.dos and mkfs.vfat) and dosfsck (aka fsck.msdos and fsck.vfat) utilities, which respectively make and check MS-DOS FAT filesystems on hard drives or on floppies.

This version uses the enhanced boot sector/superblock format of DOS 3.3+ as well as provides a default dummy boot sector code.

mkdosfs:
mkdosfs is used to create an MS-DOS file system under Linux on a device (usually a disk partition). device is the special file corresponding to the device (e.g /dev/hdXX) block-count is the number of blocks on the device. If omitted, mkdosfs automatically determines the file system size.

How To Setup Streaming Music Server - Zeya

Zeya is a lightweight music streamer. It's written in Python and Javascript which means it does not require as much resources as Java based streamers would need. Zeya uses about 10-20MB ram idle. When there is music streamed from the server to you there is a trans-coding process which uses also a tad of ram, but don't expect it to hit above the 80MB ram.

To play music from your server you need a browser which supports HTML5. The browsers which are known to work with Zeya are:
* Mozilla Firefox 3.5 or later
* Google Chrome or Chromium
* Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8 on Windows with the Google Chrome Frame plugin

The client runs in any browser that supports a certain subset of the HTML 5 technologies— no Flash needed. No Silverlight, no applets, no plugins, no external players.

HTML Syntax Checker and Reformatter - Tidy

When editing HTML it's easy to make mistakes. Wouldn't it be nice if there was a simple way to fix these mistakes automatically and tidy up sloppy editing into nicely layed out markup? Well now there is! Dave Raggett's HTML TIDY is a free utility for doing just that. It also works great on the atrociously hard to read markup generated by specialized HTML editors and conversion tools, and can help you identify where you need to pay further attention on making your pages more accessible to people with disabilities.

Tidy is able to fix up a wide range of problems and to bring to your attention things that you need to work on yourself. Each item found is listed with the line number and column so that you can see where the problem lies in your markup. Tidy won't generate a cleaned up version when there are problems that it can't be sure of how to handle. These are logged as "errors" rather than "warnings".

Large-Scale File Distribution Application - Zsync

Zsync is a file transfer program. It allows you to download a file from a remote server, where you have a copy of an older version of the file on your computer already. zsync downloads only the new parts of the file. It uses the same algorithm as rsync. However, where rsync is designed for synchronizing data from one computer to another within an organization, zsync is designed for file distribution, with one file on a server to be distributed to thousands of down-loaders. zsync requires no special server software just a web server to host the files and imposes no extra load on the server, making it ideal for large scale file distribution.

Advantages of zsync
zsync fills a gap in the technology available for large-scale file distribution. Three key points explain why zsync provides a genuinely new technique for file distribution:

* Client-side rsync: zsync uses the rsync algorithm, but runs it on the client side, thus avoiding the high server load associated with rsync.
* Rsync over HTTP: zsync provides transfers that are nearly as efficient as rsync -z or cvsup, without the need to run a special server application. All that is needed is an HTTP/1.1-compliant web server. So it works through firewalls and on shared hosting accounts, and gives less security worries.
* Handling for compressed files: rsync is ineffective on compressed files, unless they are compressed with a patched version of gzip. zsync has special handling for gzipped files, which enables update transfers of files which are distributed in compressed form.

Load / Performance Testing Web Application - Httperf

Httperf is a tool for measuring web server performance. It provides a flexible facility for generating various HTTP workloads and for measuring server performance.

The focus of httperf is not on implementing one particular benchmark but on providing a robust, high-performance tool that facilitates the construction of both micro- and macro-level benchmarks. The three distinguishing characteristics of httperf are its ...
* Robustness, which includes the ability to generate and sustain server overload
* Support for the HTTP/1.1 and SSL protocols
* Extensibility to new workload generators and performance measurements.

The purpose of httperf is to help answer a number of complex or otherwise hard to investigate questions. For instance, it is usually desirable when designing and programming a website to be interested in how well it will perform under a variety of circumstances. When investigating whether or not to invest in faster equipment, many people want to know the limits to which their current hardware can perform. This is what httperf is designed to help answer.

Testing Cross Site Scripting Vulnerability - XSSer

Cross-site scripting (XSS) is a type of computer security vulnerability typically found in Web applications that enables attackers to inject client-side script into Web pages viewed by other users.

A cross-site scripting vulnerability may be used by attackers to bypass access controls such as the same origin policy. Cross-site scripting carried out on websites accounted for roughly 80% of all security vulnerabilities documented by Symantec as of 2007. Their effect may range from a petty nuisance to a significant security risk, depending on the sensitivity of the data handled by the vulnerable site and the nature of any security mitigation implemented by the site's owner.

XSSer is an open source penetration testing tool that automates the process of detecting and exploiting XSS injections against different applications.

It contains several options to try to bypass certain filters, and various special techniques of code injection.

XSSer Features
* Added “final remote injections” option
* Cross Flash Attack!
* Cross Frame Scripting
* Data Control Protocol Injections
* Base64 (rfc2397) PoC
* OnMouseMove PoC
* Browser launcher
* New options menu
* Pre-check system
* Crawler spidering clones
* More advanced statistics system
* “Mana” ouput results

Install Many Linux Distributions from one disk - NetbootCD

NetbootCD is a GNU/Linux live CD based on Tiny Core Linux. The live CD allows the user to download and run one of several Linux netboot installers, which can install a full GNU/Linux system with only a hard drive and Internet connection.

Several of the distributions supported by NetbootCD are prerelease distributions (such as Debian testing) or development distributions (openSUSE Factory, Fedora Rawhide, Debian sid.) Because NetbootCD downloads the latest installer, which in turn downloads the latest system components, you can install a fully up-to-date system without burning a new CD.

How to Hide data (Steganography) into MP3 file - mp3stego

Steganography is the art and science of writing hidden messages in such a way that no one, apart from the sender and intended recipient, suspects the existence of the message, a form of security through obscurity

MP3Stego will hide information in MP3 files during the compression process. The data is first compressed, encrypted and then hidden in the MP3 bit stream. Although MP3Stego has been written with steganographic applications in mind it might be used as a copyright marking system for MP3 files (weak but still much better than the MPEG copyright flag defined by the standard). Any opponent can uncompress the bit stream and recompress it; this will delete the hidden information – actually this is the only attack we know yet – but at the expense of severe quality loss.

Generate and/or Encrypt Passwords - makepasswd

makepasswd generates true random passwords by using the /dev/urandom feature of Linux, with the emphasis on security over pronounceability. It can also encrypt plaintext passwords given on the command line.

makepasswd Installation:
Open the terminal and type following command to install makepasswd:

sudo apt-get install makepasswd

After successful installation you can use the makepasswd using following command, here I am generating 10 diffferent passwd having character length 10

For more detail options type command makepasswd --help or check the man pages

Setting up SSH keys for Secure Password-less SSH Login

OpenSSH is a FREE version of the SSH connectivity tools that technical users of the Internet rely on. Users of telnet, rlogin, and ftp may not realize that their password is transmitted across the Internet unencrypted, but it is. OpenSSH encrypts all traffic (including passwords) to effectively eliminate eavesdropping, connection hijacking, and other attacks. Additionally, OpenSSH provides secure tunneling capabilities and several authentication methods, and supports all SSH protocol versions.

The OpenSSH suite replaces rlogin and telnet with the ssh program, rcp with scp, and ftp with sftp. Also included is sshd (the server side of the package), and the other utilities like ssh-add, ssh-agent, ssh-keysign, ssh-keyscan, ssh-keygen and sftp-server.

If you manage more than one or two hosts, you likely have to type the same password too often. This can get quite annoying. SSH allows you to setup a public and private keypair. Using these keys, you can connect to any host which has the public key, from any host which has the private key.

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