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Detecting (Malicious) Unicode in GitHub PRs
Introducing BusKill: A Kill Cord for your Laptop
WordPress Multisite on the Darknet (Mercator .onion alias)
Crowdfunding on Crowd Supply (Review of my experience)
Trusted Boot (Anti-Evil-Maid, Heads, and PureBoot)
Nightmare on Lemmy Street (A Fediverse GDPR Horror Story)
Hardening Guide for phpList
Continuous Documentation: Hosting Read the Docs on GitHub Pages (2/2)
WordPress Profiling with XHProf (Debugging & Optimizing Speed)
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Google Chrome in 64-bit Sabayon Linux

I really should be studying for my stat exam tomorrow, but I was logging into my.ucf to download my lecture notes, and while Blackboard Learning System (the really shitty replacement for WebCT) was stuck in an infinite loading loop (most probably caused by incompetent javascript) I decided to finally get Google Chromium (which apparently has an excellent javascript engine) working on my Sabayon Linux desktop.

Michael Altfield

Hi, I’m Michael Altfield. I write articles about opsec, privacy, and devops ➡

About Michael


. . . → Read More: Google Chrome in 64-bit Sabayon Linux

Sabayon, KDE, and Evolution

I recently reformatted my hard drive--switching from pure Gentoo to the Sabayon fork. Sabayon did for Gentoo what Ubuntu did for Debian. It's generally a lot easier to use, but--unlike Ubuntu--it doesn't sacrifice functionality for ease-of-use.

Michael Altfield

Hi, I’m Michael Altfield. I write articles about opsec, privacy, and devops ➡

About Michael


. . . → Read More: Sabayon, KDE, and Evolution

eHome -- are you home?

Alright, this is bullshit.

I bought an eHome wireless NIC a while ago for really cheap. Haven't heard of eHome? Neither had I, but it didn't take me long to realize that it was actually part of D-Link Corporation when I sent my rebates to a DLink corporate address, and when I read the message: "Copyright © D-Link Corporation/D-Link Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. eHome Networking and the eHome Networking logo are registered trademarks of D-Link Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries..."

So, I figured: D-Link is a popular company, they're not going anywhere, they sell tons of devices, so my chipset is probably well supported in Linux, right? Wrong.

Michael Altfield

Hi, I’m Michael Altfield. I write articles about opsec, privacy, and devops ➡

About Michael


. . . → Read More: eHome -- are you home?

ext3 journal recovery

Every now and then, linux crashes (and consequently, hell feels a little cold). I'm not sure how to diagnose the issue, but I'm almost certain it's a result of some unstable openGL screensaver, some faulty X app, or basically anything but hardened command-line driven applications (which is simply to say: linux is perfectly stable without a GUI).

Anyway, even fewer times than a crash occurs, I sometimes cannot boot my system following the crash due to a corrupt journal on my main, root partition. To fix it, I have to boot to a live-cd (typically my gentoo minimal install CD), and type one simple command that I have scrawled in huge writing, double boxed on a desk pad. I can't tell you how many times this little command has saved my life.

Type this to fix an ext3 journal corruption:

e2fsck -b 32786 /dev/sda3

Michael Altfield

Hi, I’m Michael Altfield. I write articles about opsec, privacy, and devops ➡

About Michael

tech.michaelaltfield.net/

`ps` fail with sys-process/procps

Today, I ran an `emerge -uDN world`, and mysql kept failing on the ./configure step because it couldn't properly execute `ps`.

For as long as I can remember, my gentoo box has been unable to run `ps`. Every time I did, I'd get a "No such file or directory" error regarding /lib64/libproc-3.2.6.so

Upon further investigation, I found that an `ls /lib64/libproc*` showed two files:

/lib64/libproc-3.2.7.so /lib64/libproc.so

...so, `ps` was trying to access 3.2.6, and I had 3.2.7. Obviously something was out of whack--probably an environment variable. I tried creating a /lib64/libproc-3.2.6.so symlink back to the /lib64/libproc-3.2.7, but `ps` only failed with a different error.

So, naturally, I figured I would simply unmerge and re-emerge the package. An `emerge --search libproc` reveled only one package: dev-libs/libproccpuinfo. After unmerging and re-emerging this package a dozen times, I fell back to google. Turns out that the REAL package for the libproc.so file is sys-process/procps. When I got the...

!!! 'sys-process/procps' is part of your system profile. !!! Unmerging it may be damaging to your system.

>>> Waiting 10 seconds before starting...

...message, I was sure that I'd break my system, but I continued, finished the unmerge, re-emerged the package, crossed my fingers, and
. . . → Read More: `ps` fail with sys-process/procps

Blog Moved & Upgraded

So, it turned out that--by some miraculus chance--the day I decide to move my blog from wordpress.com to my own server is the day after a major upgrade of wordpress is released (v2.3 to 2.5). I figured that, while I was at it, I would upgrade the server that I setup a few weeks back (I've been planning this move for a while now, just never really got around to finishing). I'm pretty sure I followed the installation process just fine, but when I tried to go to any page on my fresh, new site (including wp-admin/upgrade.php) I got slammed with this lovely error:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function require_wp_db()

Eventually I decided "fuck the installation instructions." I was able to install it by copying my config file and other data TO the new wordpress folder (the suggested process is the reverse: copying the new files into your current, older install).

It's a bitch of a thing to search, too. If you search for that error (at least now, anyway) you get a bunch of popular blog sites that have since been fixed. There is no info from the webmaster or blog author as to HOW they fixed it,
. . . → Read More: Blog Moved & Upgraded