YiBi's Life|Live Log» The Techie Stuff Archives -

Problem with pam_radius on Solaris 10

yibi — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 13:16:39 +0000

I was implementing pam_radius login for some Solaris 10 servers today and I got this error.

Aug 10 20:41:57 server1 sshd[17846]: [ID 801593 auth.debug] pam_radius_auth: DEBUG: getservbyname(radius, udp) returned 0.
Aug 10 20:41:57 server1 sshd[17846]: [ID 801593 auth.error] pam_radius_auth: Failed looking up IP address for RADIUS server radius2

Weird error. Googled and found all kinds on weird solutions including hacking the source code and stuff.
I took a quick look at the source code and realised something – my server had no knowledge of the radius and radacct ports. And it’s actually in the debug message: getservbyname failed. I was mislead by the “Failed looking up IP address for RADIUS server” error message.

Added the following to /etc/services:

radius 1812/udp
radacct 1813/udp

And voila! Simple as that.

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Updating iPhone to iOS 4 in Vmware

yibi — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 07:30:59 +0000

While updating my iPhone 3GS to iOS 4, I encountered an error on iTunes saying that my iPhone could not be updated. My phone went into recovery mode after that. This is not the first time I’m doing restore and update with Vmware, so I’m pretty surprise why the update process failed.

A peek into dmesg shows the following -

[52420.444795] usb 2-2: usbfs: interface 2 claimed by ipheth while ‘vmware-vmx’ sets config #4
[52420.460159] usb 2-2: usbfs: process 9345 (vmware-vmx) did not claim interface 2 before use
[52420.460222] usb 2-2: usbfs: process 9345 (vmware-vmx) did not claim interface 2 before use

Linux is now capable of detecting the iPhone over USB natively and automatically via the iPhone for tethering and direct access to the underlying filesystem, so it’s hogging the USB port on the iPhone and denying Vmware of accessing it.

Anyway the solution is simple. Just run

# rmmod ipheth

# dmesg

[52445.922401] usbcore: deregistering interface driver ipheth
[52445.964038] ipheth 2-2:4.2: Apple iPhone USB Ethernet now disconnected
[52491.228075] usb 2-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 21
[52491.524073] usb 2-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 21

Linux releases the iPhone. On Vmware, disconnect and connect the iPhone again.

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Update: Native Tethering To IPhone On Linux

yibi — Mon, 24 May 2010 06:45:48 +0000

I missed out something important in my previous post on the native tethering on Linux. Turns out my tethering works only after I kick off the tether from Windows (Which resides in a VM on my machine). Further digging led me to the following site.

http://giagio.com/wiki/moin.cgi/iPhoneEthernetDriver

In order to get tethering to work, you need to ‘pair’ the IPhone with your machine. The site above provides the source to the pairing program, which surprisingly isn’t part of any Debian package. Or at least I couldn’t find it. Someone please point me to the right package if there’s one.

Anyway, just follow the instructions on the site to checkout the source from GIT and compile ipheth-pair. Plug in your IPhone and check your dmesg for the following:

[40883.744096] usb 2-1: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 10
[40883.905582] ipheth 2-1:4.2: Apple iPhone USB Ethernet device attached

Run ipheth-pair if your IPhone has been picked up and loaded successfully.

Leave the rest to Network Manager. Just connect to wwan0 like connecting to any other devices.

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Native IPhone Tethering On Linux (Debian)

yibi — Thu, 20 May 2010 07:58:04 +0000

For some reason, I can get tethering to work natively on Linux after I did an upgrade on my unstable Debian.

This was not possible previously. Now the kernel detects a new device called ipheth (IPhone USB Ethernet device). This is the magic that made the tethering possible. And the best part is that it works out of the box with Network Manager.

This is really cool. I used to tether from Linux using Bluetooth, but the connection is unstable sometimes.

Screenshots of dmesg output etc. Click for the full size image.

I’m running the unstable distro of Debian, so I’m not sure if this is available on the stable release. It might be possible on Ubuntu, since they get all the cutting edge stuff.

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Free Google Voice for Students

yibi — Sun, 16 May 2010 15:47:16 +0000

“Google Voice for Students

Google Voice gives you more control over your communications with transcribed voicemail sent via email, free SMS and more. Enter your .edu email address below and we’ll send you an invite within 24 hours.”

I’m not sure if this is also applicable in Singapore, but I suggest just giving it a try.

http://www.google.com/googlevoice/students.html

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Google Launches New Social Networking Platform – Google Buzz

yibi — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:47:40 +0000

Google Buzz

Google launched Google Buzz, a social networking platform. This is cool, because I’m an avid user of Google. But I’m wondering at the same time, what’s going to happen to Google Wave? The functions seems to overlap, although Wave seems to be more cutting edge.

Right now Google Buzz is only available on Gmail. I wished they had it on Google Apps for Your Domain as well. I host my email, docs, calendars etc on Google using my own domain. Unfortunately, I can’t use Buzz with my own domain. Same goes for Wave when it was launched.

Google Buzz *IS* available on Google Apps For Your Domain! For some reason it didn’t show up in the mail interface on the PC, but it works on my IPhone. Cool! That means now I can have all my stuff on Google. Mail, Calendar, Docs, Picassa.

Find out more about Google Buzz at http://buzz.google.com

And no. No IPhone app for Google Buzz yet. Probably never.

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IPhone Tethering – Use and Abuse!

yibi — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 13:46:51 +0000

This is the geeky sequel to my last Linux to IPhone tethering episode where we used and abused the IPhone tethering function.

Some background, I’m one of those people who contracted (and got stuck) with the 50G SingTel Mobile Broadband Plan before the days of 12GB IPhone plan. My usage was about 4G per month, so none of the plans was suitable for me at that time.

Anyway, that aside. For some reasons my team had to work in a place where we had no internet access while we are building the network for high speed internet access. What irony! The only systems engineer in the team (me) decided that I had alot of data to spare, so here we go…use and abuse!

Configuration’s simple. First you have to setup tethering as per my previous post on IPhone tethering. Once you are done with that, do the follow steps. And again, it’s a 5 minute quick hack.

1. vi linux-router.sh

2. Paste the following into the shell script

#!/bin/bash
/sbin/ifconfig wlan0 192.168.0.1 255.255.255.0
/sbin/iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o bnep0 -j MASQUERADE
/sbin/iptables -A FORWARD -i bnep0 -o wlan0 -m state –state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT
/sbin/iptables -A FORWARD -i wlan0 -o bnep0 -j ACCEPT

3. Save the file.
4. chmod 700 linux-router.sh
5. ./linux-router.sh
6. Done!

My colleagues are connected to a WIFI router, hence the use of wlan0 as the “inside” interface. bnep0 is the “outside” interface connected to the IPhone via bluetooth. All the machines point to my laptop as the gateway, which bears the IP address 192.168.0.1. All of them are NAT’d out from the outside interface.

I have 2Mbps for my plan. Good enough for the team to check email and do some simple web browsing for information.

There are other things you can do like transparent proxying so that you save abit of bandwidth.

Leave a comment if you have any questions on the configurations. Have fun!

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Linux to IPhone Tethering In 5 Mins

yibi — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 13:57:28 +0000

Tethering from a mobile phone is not new to me. I started from the days of having to script the ppp chat scripts to wvdial to finally having Network Manager recognizing my mobile phone as a 3G modem.

IPhone is new. I have been reading about tethering on Linux as soon as I bought it. Painful ways, jailbreak, run proxy etc etc etc.

Linux didn’t recognize the IPhone as a modem when I plugged in via USB, so it’s only bluetooth now. I tried the tethering of my Mac first. With bluetooth, I found that tethering actually happens over the PAN (Personal Area Network). That should work with Linux, and so it did.

These are steps for me to get tethering on Debian in 5 mins.

1. Run “sudo aptitude -y install blueman” in Debian.

2. Logout and login again. This is for the dbus and stuff to react correctly when you turn on your bluetooth later on.

3. Turn on your bluetooth or insert your USB bluetooth dongle. A bluetooth icon should appear in your system tray or whatever you call it in Gnome. That’s Blueman.

4. Discover and add your IPhone in Blueman

5. Turn on Internet Tethering under “Settings –> General –> Network”. Choose Bluetooth.

6. Go back to your Blueman, click on it and you should see your IPhone. Right click on your IPhone and select “Network Access Point”

7. And you are done!

That’s it! Simple right? No hacking, no jailbreak!

Do drop me a comment if anything’s unclear. The same solution should work with any of the modern distros like Fedora and Ubuntu.

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Certificate Error When Building Your First IPhone App?

yibi — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:34:11 +0000

You probably ended up here while searching for the following error message in XCode when trying to build and run your first IPhone app :

Code Sign error: The identity ‘iPhone Developer’ doesn’t match any valid certificate/private key pair in the default keychain

Before you start googling and attempt to move certificates all over, or spend $99 USD getting the developer account check the following:

Make sure you are building and running for the simulator and not your IPhone device. This is rudimentary but easily missed.

I ran into this error upon compiling a test ‘Hello World’ app. So I’m pretty sure there are more people out there running into this error.

XCode defaults to building and running on the IPhone device, which is not possible until you have a developer’s account. Building and running on the IPhone requires the code to be signed before building, which results in the error that you have gotten.

I hope you have found this before going for the last resort of subscribing for the developer’s account. And if you already did, happy programming! Hope to see your app on the App Store soon!

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Getting The Wii Motion Plus? Hold Your Horses!

yibi — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 14:51:19 +0000

Screenshot taken from Engadget.com

Original article is at Engadget.com

Alright! Hold your horses if you have not bought your Wii Motion Plus. Even if you have already bought your’s, no problem. You can still get the Nyko Wand+

This product was exhibited at the CES 2010. What they have done is to build in the Wii Motion Plus into the WiiMote-size Nyko Wand+, so you won’t have to attach that addition piece of hardware to your WiiMote making it look quite awkward. With the Nunchuk it looks even messier. So this is cool. No additional attachment, no worries of breaking the contacts between the WiiMote and the Motion Plus.

This is a “must buy” item for me when it’s available in March.

But something puzzling me though. Why didn’t Nintendo think of it?

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Winscape – Motion aware virtual window and scenery