Continue reading »]]> I know, right? Polyphonic ringtones are so 2003. But alas, I see alot of referral traffic, mostly from Sweden, of people looking for some old Infected Mushroom midi ringtones I made back in high school. Well, Swedes be appeased! Here they are:

Infected Mushroom – Bust A Move

Infected Mushroom – Shakawkaw

Continue reading »]]> In a weird stretch of weirdness, a prospective employer asked me to send them some ascii art I made. So I made an ascii art image of my pet potbelly pig, Senator Jambon.

      _-------_               _------_   /\
     /          *---______---*        *-//||_
    /                                  (    (*\___-.
   /|                                            ( |
  /|                            |        (     ___/ 
 /  \    /                       \      /-____/
/\   |   \--___             ___---|    \
/\    \  |      *----____--*       \  |
       \ \                          \ \
         \\                           \\

Continue reading »]]> One of my friends came to me and asked if I would help her root her Motorola I1. Always up to help friends liberate their devices, I told her I would, then set out on my google quest to find all the resources this process would require. As is usually the case with unpopular, niche, or older devices like the Motorola I1, there was a lot of non-working scripts and a hefty handful of misguidance. This article is intended to replace other articles on the subject. Hopefully, you found this article first and didn’t have to waste too much of your time messing around with the others.

Caution: You must know how to use the command line to do this. I provide no guarantees and cannot be held liable for any damage that may occur to your phone by following this guide. This is for informational purposes only.

Step 1. Install the android sdk
I won’t go into this in detail. There are maintained & updated instructions at http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing.html#Installing

Step 2. Enable USB debugging on your phone
An excerpt from: http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/device.html

Turn on “USB Debugging” on your device.
On the device, go to Settings > Applications > Development and enable USB debugging.

Once this is complete, plug your phone into your computer via your USB cable.

Step 3. Get the files
The files are available in .zip and .tgz archives here. You don’t need both. The tgz is there for convenience for those who prefer it. Once you have the archive, unzip it somewhere that’s easy to get to from a command line.

Step 4. Edit the install file
I was hoping to automate this step so you didnt have to do it manually, but unfortunately stock android (at least 1.5) does not have the gnu-utils necessary to do this – so you’ll have to do it by hand… Thankfully, it’s not a terribly difficult process.
In your local terminal (on your computer, not on the device), run the following command:

adb shell mount

You will see a bunch of output that looks something like this:

rootfs / rootfs ro 0 0
tmpfs /dev tmpfs rw,mode=755 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,mode=600 0 0
proc /proc proc rw 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs rw 0 0
tmpfs /sqlite_stmt_journals tmpfs rw,size=4096k 0 0
/dev/block/mtdblock10 /phx/cp yaffs2 rw 0 0
/dev/block/mtdblock18 /phx/cpb yaffs2 rw 0 0
/dev/block/mtdblock17 /phx/bp squashfs ro 0 0
/dev/block/mtdblock15 /phx/csd squashfs ro 0 0
/dev/block/mtdblock14 /phx/ue squashfs ro 0 0
/dev/block/mtdblock11 /phx/logger yaffs2 rw 0 0
/dev/block/mtdblock7 /system yaffs2 ro 0 0
/dev/block/mtdblock9 /data yaffs2 rw,nosuid,nodev 0 0
/dev/block/mtdblock8 /cache yaffs2 rw,nosuid,nodev 0 0
/dev/block/mtdblock12 /data/preload yaffs2 ro 0 0

I have highlighted the line you are looking for in this example. You want to find the line that shows the device that is mounted to /system. In this example, /dev/block/mtdblock7 is mounted to /system. Yours may be different, hence why we check to see what it is first. Once you have this value, open install.sh in your favorite editor (on Windows, I like Notepad++), there are instructions as to where to paste this value. Then save the file and close it.

Step 5. Push the files to the phone
In your local terminal, cd to the directory where you unzipped the files, then run the following commands.

adb push Superuser.apk /sdcard/Superuser.apk
adb push busybox /sdcard/busybox
adb push su /sdcard/su
adb push rage /data/local/tmp/rage
adb push install.sh /data/local/tmp/install.sh
adb shell chmod 775 /data/local/tmp
adb shell chmod 755 /data/local/tmp/*

Step 6. Install ConnectBot
Pretty straightforward. Install ConnectBot from the android market. This method may work with other terminal apps, but I have not tested them. I had no luck getting this method to work over ADB.

Step 7. Execute rage
Open ConnectBot and connect to your phone, then issue the following command:

/data/local/tmp/rage

Step 8. WAIT
This has its own step because it’s really important. You have to wait. Be patient. I know, it’s hard, you’re excited, but don’t get all button happy. you’ll mess up the process. The process is complete when you see

[*] Forked %d childs.

(Where %d is replaced by the number of threads forked.)

Once you see this message, disconnect from ConnectBot.

Step 9. Check for root and install root utilities
Open ConnectBot and reconnect to your phone. Where before you saw the $ character indicating you were in userland, you should now see a # indicating that you are root. If you see the # character, congrats! You’re almost done and you may proceed. If you still see the $ character, something messed up and you need to backtrace your steps and figure out where you went wrong. If you are now root, issue the following command:

/data/local/tmp/install.sh

If all went well, this script should have executed with no output and no errors. If everything looks good, go ahead and sync/reboot your phone.

sync
reboot

Step 10. Test your install
At this point, if all went well, your Motorola I1 should be rooted, rebooted and have all the utilities necessary to escalate to root on the command line or run applications that require root permissions. To be sure that it worked correctly let’s test it.

To test on your phone with ConnectBot, start ConnectBot, connect to your phone and issue the command:

su

To test from your computer, you can simply run:

adb shell su

If you’re a security-minded individual or a researcher and are interested in the details of how the root escalation works, there is a great article about it here.

Continue reading »]]>

J'Aime le Dubstep Logo

Continue reading »]]>

Amazon Web Services

• Just download this tool!
• Download this unnecessarily complex script!
• Buy our more expensive, less flexible backup service!

To be fair, the vendors of these Mac Amazon GUI things are doing it for teh moneyz, the guys with the unnecessarily complex scripts are mostly novices trying to be helpful, and carbonite just advertises to panicky old people on the Glenn Beck radio show.

This method uses (instead of a ridiculous huge script) a very simple, one-command bash script. It isn’t as easy as a one-click GUI, but should be more straightforward than some unnecessarily complex script with little, or poorly written instruction and cheaper than some other crappy backup service. With that in mind, lets start with dependencies.

1. Install dependencies
Mac GPG
DarwinPorts
Once DarwinPorts is installed, open up your terminal and install duplicity with the following command:

sudo port install duplicity

2. Generate your PGP encryption keys
In terminal, type:

gpg --gen-key

It will look like this.

gpg (GnuPG/MacGPG2) 2.0.14; Copyright (C) 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Please select what kind of key you want:
   (1) RSA and RSA (default)
   (2) DSA and Elgamal
   (3) DSA (sign only)
   (4) RSA (sign only)
Your selection? 1
RSA keys may be between 1024 and 4096 bits long.
What keysize do you want? (2048) 4096
Requested keysize is 4096 bits
Please specify how long the key should be valid.
         0 = key does not expire
        = key expires in n days
      w = key expires in n weeks
      m = key expires in n months
      y = key expires in n years
Key is valid for? (0) 10y
Key expires at Sat Mar  6 20:17:39 2021 CST
Is this correct? (y/N) y

GnuPG needs to construct a user ID to identify your key.

Real name: Your Name
Email address: Your@Email.com
Comment: Backup
You selected this USER-ID:
    "Your Name (Backup) <Your@Email.com>"

Change (N)ame, (C)omment, (E)mail or (O)kay/(Q)uit? O
You need a Passphrase to protect your secret key.    

We need to generate a lot of random bytes. It is a good idea to perform
some other action (type on the keyboard, move the mouse, utilize the
disks) during the prime generation; this gives the random number
generator a better chance to gain enough entropy.
We need to generate a lot of random bytes. It is a good idea to perform
some other action (type on the keyboard, move the mouse, utilize the
disks) during the prime generation; this gives the random number
generator a better chance to gain enough entropy.
gpg: key F60F4441 marked as ultimately trusted
public and secret key created and signed.

gpg: checking the trustdb
gpg: 3 marginal(s) needed, 1 complete(s) needed, PGP trust model
gpg: depth: 0  valid:   3  signed:   1  trust: 0-, 0q, 0n, 0m, 0f, 3u
gpg: depth: 1  valid:   1  signed:   0  trust: 0-, 0q, 0n, 0m, 1f, 0u
gpg: next trustdb check due at 2011-12-13
pub   4096R/F60F4441 2011-03-10 [expires: 2021-03-07]
      Key fingerprint = 4BC0 7C11 8436 5AA9 7378  20BD B2FC A648 F60F 4441
uid                  Your Name (Backup) <Your@Email.com>
sub   4096R/FB487F88 2011-03-10 [expires: 2021-03-07]

Take note of your PGP key ID. The PGP key in the above example is F60F4441. You can also discover your key ID by listing your keys:

gpg --list-keys

Which outputs:

pub   4096R/F60F4441 2011-03-10 [expires: 2021-03-07]
uid                  Your Name (Backup) <Your@Email.com>
sub   4096R/FB487F88 2011-03-10 [expires: 2021-03-07]

3. Create a bucket on your Amazon S3 account. In it, create a folder.

4. Create and configure your backup script.
Create a file called s3backup.sh in your home folder with the following content:

#!/bin/bash
root=$HOME
gpg_key_id=''	# Your PGP key ID
bucket='' 	# Your bucket name
folder=''	# Your folder name
 
export PASSPHRASE=''	# Your PGP passphrase
 
# The following two values can be found in 
# your Amazon AWS account page under "Security Credentials"
export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=''	# AWS access key ID
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=''	# AWS secret access key
 
# These lines are for the cron environment, which likes to complain
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin:/opt/local/bin
ulimit -n 1024
gpg-agent
 
duplicity incremental \
--include-globbing-filelist ${root}/.filelist \
--encrypt-key ${gpg_key_id} \
--full-if-older-than 3M \
--name ${bucket} \
--s3-use-new-style \
--sign-key ${gpg_key_id} \
-v3 \
${root} \
s3+http://${bucket}/${folder}

Edit the file so that it has all the values it needs. Feel free to read the duplicity manual and make any changes to the duplicity command, then make the file executable. in terminal, type:

chmod +x ~/s3backup.sh

5. Create your backup file list
Create a file named “.filelist” in your home directory, in it add the following content:

+ /Users/*/Desktop
+ /Users/*/Documents
+ /Users/*/Downloads
+ /Users/*/Library/Application Support/AddressBook
+ /Users/*/Library/Calendars
+ /Users/*/Library/Mail
+ /Users/*/Library/Mail Downloads
+ /Users/*/Library/Preferences
+ /Users/*/Library/Widgets
+ /Users/*/Movies
+ /Users/*/Music
+ /Users/*/Pictures
+ /Users/*/Public
+ /Users/*/Sites
- **.DS_Store
- **.localized
- **.fseventsd
- **.Spotlight-V100
- **.Trash
- **.Trashes
- **

If you grok, lines starting with a “-” mean exclude. Filenames/directories that match these lines will be excluded from the backup. Lines starting with “+” means the opposite, these directories will be included. The file list I posted above is generic and should be useful to standard users. Of course, feel free to modify it as you wish.

You’re pretty much done at this point. The only thing left to do is add this script to your crontab.

6. Add the script to crontab
In terminal, type:

crontab -e

You will be presented with a command line text editor. If this is too much for you, try crontooie

I want to have my backups occur daily at 10pm, so my crontab looks like this:

# min  hr  dom  mon  dow        command
  0    22   *    *    *         ~/s3backup.sh

7. Have a beer
And that’s it. Pretty painless with a decent explanation of what’s going on. I hope this was easy for you. if you need help, check the comments first. Else, comment with your questions

Continue reading »]]>

KeePass Logo

KeePass is an awesome tool for generating and storing all your strong passwords. You can think of it sort-of like a keychain that requires a key to open. To use it, you simply create a new database, assign a password to that database, and then start populating that database with passwords you use to access various services. There’s only one problem with this approach… What if your KeePass database gets corrupted/deleted/you’re on another computer?

There are a few solutions to this:

1. Back it up on a flash drive
2. Back it up via a backup service
3. Back it up on your smartphone
4. Back it up on your own server

Thoughts:

1. I felt like backing this up on a flash drive was useless and irritating, since I don’t use my flash drive much.
2. I don’t want to pay for a backup service.
3. There’s a KeePass app for my Android phone
4. I already pay for my server

Obviously, I opted for the last two options… but then I started thinking about those options…

1. Why would I manually scp my backup to my server? that sounds tedious.
2. How do I ensure that my Android has the latest iteration of my KeePass database?

I decided that these were reasonable problems, and came up with the following solution.

Launchd to the rescue! (again)
Statement: I DON’T WANT TO THINK ABOUT BACKUPS.
Solution: AUTOMATE IT.

And that’s what I did. Here’s how.

Backing up to remote server via scp
First, I created my backup script as ~/bin/backup. This script is actually useful for more than just my KeePass db, so you can use it as you will.

#!/bin/bash
user=[your_user]
server=[hostname]
dir=[backup_dir]
if(($# > 0)); then
        eval `/usr/bin/ssh-agent -s`
        /usr/bin/ssh-add
        for file in $@; do
                echo "Backing up ${file}"
                /usr/bin/rsync -ve "ssh" ${file} $user@$server:$dir
        done
else
        echo "No file(s) specified for backup"
fi

Simple enough. It sets the environment ssh variables for your current user, then uses the rsync binary to xfer the files via ssh. If you use pubkey auth on the remote server with the default key on your local machine (~/.ssh/id_*sa), this will “just work” with no interaction. If you’re using a different key or ssh is running on a non-standard port, you can change the following line as follows:

/usr/bin/rsync -ve "ssh -i [keyfile_path] -p [port]" ${file} $user@$server:$dir

Now, we just need to automate it. I decided that I wanted my KeePass file to be backed up only when it is modified… So I need some sort of something to keep an eye on my KeePass file for changes, and then act accordingly. Launchd is good for this. I created the file ~/Library/LaunchAgents/net.egeste.backup.plist with the following content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>net.egeste.backup</string>
        <key>Program</key>
        <string>/Users/egeste/bin/backup</string>
        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
                <string>NULL</string>
                <string>/path/to/keepass.kdb</string>
        </array>
        <key>WatchPaths</key>
        <array>
                <string>/path/to/keepass.kdb</string>
        </array>
</dict>
</plist>

This will tell launchd to watch /path/to/keepass.kdb and monitor changes. If a change is noticed it will automatically run /Users/egeste/bin/backup with the argument /path/to/keepass.kdb. Hence, the command being run will be:

/Users/egeste/bin/backup /path/to/keepass.kdb

Now all we need to do is tell launchd to load this configuration. In the command line we type:

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/net.egeste.backup.plist

Boom. Done. Now every time you make a modification and save your KeePass file, it will automatically be backed up to your server, in the directory you specified. Easy.

Now what about the smartphone?
I thought this was really cool to begin with. Obviously, I cant remember the 25 character 160bit entropic string that is my facebook password, and I don’t want to copy it by hand from my laptop screen into my Android settings, so lucky for me there’s an KeePass Android app. Neato! I decided that it would be best to have my KeePass database write in one direction to my phone – that is to say that changes I make on my computer go to my phone, but changes I make on my phone don’t go to my computer. This eliminates the issue of conflicts. I decided that the database should be synced whenever my phone is present and the external storage is enabled – so once again I started with a bash script at ~/bin/sync:

#!/bin/bash
if(($# > 1)); then
        file=${1}
        for i in $@; do
                if [ ${i} == ${file} ]; then continue;
                elif [ -d ${i} ]; then
                        echo "Syncing ${file} with ${i}"
                        /usr/bin/rsync ${file} ${i}
                fi
        done
else
        echo "Not enough params"
fi

This script will take one file, and copy it to any subsequent directories specified. Example:

sync file.txt /Users/egeste /Users/egeste/Desktop /Users/egeste/Documents

will copy file.txt to /Users/egeste /Users/egeste/Desktop and /Users/egeste/Documents.

Once again, we just need to automate it with launchd. I created the file ~/Library/LaunchAgents/net.egeste.sync.plist with the following content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>net.egeste.sync.keepass</string>
        <key>Program</key>
        <string>/Users/egeste/bin/sync</string>
        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
                <string>NULL</string>
                <string>/path/to/keepass.kdb</string>
                <string>/Volumes/[device_name]/[dir]</string>
        </array>
        <key>WatchPaths</key>
        <array>
                <string>/Volumes</string>
        </array>
</dict>
</plist>

This will tell launchd to watch the /Volumes directory for any changes (such as a storage device being plugged in) – if a change occurs, launchd will run the /Users/egeste/bin/sync script, and sync /path/to/keepass.kdb to /Volumes/[device_name]/[dir]. Obviously, you want to change some of these values.

Once again, we register the script with launchd as follows:

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/net.egeste.sync.plist

And there you have it. If you did this correctly, your keepass database should be backed up to your server every time you save it, and backed up to your phone every time you plug it in/enable external storage.

Enjoy.

Continue reading »]]>

Launch Party Flier

Details:
* Where: ATX Hackerspace at 1601 Rutherford Ln, Suite A200
* When: Saturday November 6th, 5pm – late
* Music: DJ Belmont – check him out on soundcloud and thesixtyone
* LAZORZ: MidnightGravity
* Price: FREE! – but donations (cash/check) are encouraged!

Schedule:
* 5pm – 7pm: Open house with demos, project talks, general geeking out
* 6pm: Begin serving food until we run out!
* 7pm – 9pm Egesté spinning
* 9pm – Late Belmont spinning, LAZORZ arrive!

RSVP:
You can see who is coming and RSVP on the Facebook event page! (RSVP is not required and feel free to just show up!)

Continue reading »]]>
So you reformatted your mac and didn’t back up your AddressBook contacts? Whoops. That’s ok though, if you have a jailbroken iPhone you can restore your AddressBook contacts with a little bit of hackery. So lets get started!

1. SSH into your iphone, and get r00t.

TheGame:~ egeste$ ssh root@192.168.1.122
root@192.168.1.122's password:
iPhone:~ root:

2. Go into the mobile user’s home dir and create a backup folder

iPhone:~ root: cd /var/mobile
iPhone:/var/mobile root: mkdir Backup

3. Copy the AddressBook databases into your backup folder

iPhone:/var/mobile root: cp Library/AddressBook/* Backup/

4. Open up iTunes and plug in your iPhone/iPod Touch (if it’s not already). In iTunes, click on your device under Devices, then click on the tab for Info. Check the box to sync your contacts, then click sync. iTunes will ask you if you want to do this because blah blah blah whatever, just do it.

5. Once the sync is complete you will notice that all the contacts are gone from your phone. DON’T FREAK OUT. return to your SSH session and copy the database files back to their original location like so:

iPhone:/var/mobile root: cp Backup/* Library/AddressBook/

6. If you check your phone contacts again you should see that all of your contacts are back. Now all you need to do is sync your phone again. BLAMMO! iTunes should have imported all the contacts from your iPhone into AddressBook. You may have to do some merging and whatnot.

I suppose this would work for Outlook contacts as well, but I haven’t tested it.

Anyway, that’s all for now.
-Egeste

Continue reading »]]> A modified repost from Gizmodo

1. Install a hard drive in a laptop
2. Perform a clean OS install on a machine with two OSes
3. Swap out the battery on your iPod/iPhone
4. Jailbreak an iPhone
5. Wire your house for Ethernet and Coax cable
6. Use BitTorrent and RSS to automatically download new shows from trackers
7. Use an A/V receiver to its fullest capability (every port is taken)
8. Calibrate an HDTV without the manual
9. Use a DSLR in full manual mode
10. Hack the encryption and mooch your neighbor’s Wi-Fi
11. Solder cleanly enough to get around a circuit board
12. Use your 3G phone as a Wi-Fi access point
13. Shove the guts of a modern game console into a retro game console
14. Design a webpage in HTML by hand that features a picture of your cat
15. Use Photoshop to imperceptibly doctor a photo
16. Abstain from buying extended warranties
17. Know where to buy cheap cables and accessories
18. Fix your parents’computer over the phone without looking at a computer
19. Enter the Konami code
20. Comment on Gizmodo from your phone
21. Type quickly using T9 texting
22. Program a universal remote
23. Contribute code to the Linux kernel
24. Hide porn from your significant other
25. Avoid DRM on everything
26. Know how to back up your data to networked storage—and actually do it
27. Watch TV shows on the internet for free
28. Edit together digital video ripped from YouTube
29. Play any SNES game on your computer through an emulator
30. Reset expired trial software by messing with the registry
31. Hackintosh your PC
32. Download pre-release movies from Usenet
33. Hack the Wii to play homebrew games
34. Get around web content filters on public computers
35. Get into a Windows computer if you forgot your password
36. Securely erase your data so it can’t be recovered
37. Share a printer between a Mac and a PC on a network
38. Build a fighting robot
39. Write your own Firefox plugins
40. Navigate and reorganize the files on your computer in DOS
41. Get something on the front page of Digg
42. Get through to executive customer service
43. Rip a CD to V0 quality MP3s
44. Rip a DVD to DivX
45. Build your own computer from parts
46. Swap out the hard drive in your DVR for a bigger one
47. Get an NES cartridge working again by blowing in it
48. Calibrate a 7.1 surround-sound system
49. Play downloaded games on a Nintendo DS
50. Talk about things that aren’t tech related

My Score:

Your score:
]]> http://egeste.net/blog/2010/06/14/how-geeky-are-you/feed/ 0 http://egeste.net/blog/2010/04/18/on-the-subject-of-objective-morality/ http://egeste.net/blog/2010/04/18/on-the-subject-of-objective-morality/#comments Sun, 18 Apr 2010 18:33:18 +0000 Egeste http://www.egeste.net/?p=23