Edwin van Nuil

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS and JDK / Netbeans 6.1

When trying to install Netbeans 6.1 on my Ubuntu workstation the installation window would freeze. After some searching I first tried this:

export LIBXCB_ALLOW_SLOPPY_LOCK=true

But that didn't solve my problem; then I decided to turn off the Visual Effects (System > Preferences > Appearance > Visual Effects => none) and it installed just fine.

Also note that you're using the right java version, the official from sun:

nuil@Solaris:~$ java -version
java version "1.6.0_06"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_06-b02)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 10.0-b22, mixed mode)

otherwise install the sun version:

sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk
sudo update-java-alternatives -s java-6-sun

Problems with bridging OpenVPN and Shorewall

We have a location were we need remote access through a firewall to the LAN behind the firewall. For these purposes we configured a Gentoo machine with Shorewall and OpenVPN. The tap0 and eth0 are together in a bridge and this way a VPN client has access to the LAN behind the firewall. Works excellent for quite some time.

Now we wanted the same functionality at another location. So we duplicated the solution. But no way that we got the bridging working. After some testing it became clear that the problem was with shorewall. But we had the exact same configuration as in the other location.

Finally Martijn discovered the only difference between the two Firewalls; the working one was kernel 2.6.16 and the new one 2.6.24. After some more Googling the following statement was found on the Shorewall site:

Warning

SUPPORT FOR BRIDGING AS DESCRIBED IN THIS ARTICLE IS DISCONTINUED IN LINUX KERNEL 2.6.20. The underlying Netfilter features that Shorewall Bridge/Firewall support relies on were removed from Netfilter and it is no longer possible to define Shorewall zones in terms of physical bridge ports.

In another article, I describe how to configure a bridge/firewall which will work with kernel 2.6.20 and later versions.

After that is was following the instructions in the mentioned article and we had a running bridged VPN.

Compiling Openvpn on OS/X Leopard

We use OpenVPN a lot. In the Tiger days I used Tunnelblick and everything was fine. But now in the Leopard days things are less than optimal. Tunnelblick crashes a lot, isn't updated in a while and gave al sorts of routing problems.

So I decided to compile the latest and greatest from source and start the VPN connection from the Terminal. Although I miss the visual indicator this works very well at the moment. Maybe I make a GUI frontend in the future but for now I can connect steady to our servers.

Yubico's Yubikey

Received my Yubikeys from Yubico last week. I was listening to the Security Now podcast and heard Steve Gibson telling about this product. I went direct to the website and ordered two. I downloaded the C library and received the AES key from Simon Josefsson. Now I'm making my own verification server. This way it's very easy to add strong authentication to our applications.

Fixing problem installing Boot Camp 2.1 on XP

On my MacBook Pro I have a small Windows XP installation using Bootcamp for the few times XP using VMWare Fushion isn't working or to slow (CoD4).
Since Service Pack 3 is out for Windows XP I wanted to upgrade but according to Apple first I had to upgrade my Boot Camp 2.0 to 2.1.
So I downloaded the standalone installer; started the installation and after a few seconds without a warning the installation stopped.
Tried to download it another time because I thought the installation image was damaged, but same results. I used the Apple update in Windows but this also gave the same results.

After some Googling I found this thread on the Apple discussion forums; seems I'm not the only one having troubles: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1498651&tstart=0.

Many suggestions, many solutions, some work, some don't. But what seems to work for one person didn't work for another; so there isn't one fix for the problem it seems.

The following fix worked for me:

run regedit
search for Boot Camp-services (others seem to use Boot Camp Services)
change the language to 1033 (decimal)  (mine was 1043)
run installer again and presto

Now installing Windows XP Service Pack 3.

Getting Nessus running on Mac OS/X Leopard

Today I wanted to install nessus on my Macbook Pro using MacPorts on Leopard. But I got the following error:

libtool: warning: cannot infer operation mode from `/usr/bin/gcc-4.0'
libtool: you must specify a MODE
Try `libtool --help' for more information.
make[1]: *** [plugutils.o] Error 1
make: *** [all] Error 2

I'm running OS/X 10.5.2 with MacPorts 1.600. After some Googling I found the following bug report: http://trac.macports.org/ticket/14429 titled "nessus-libraries build failed (libtool error)". And in the comments there was the fix: I had to edit the Portfile and add the following line:

"configure.cc    gcc"

I made changes to the following files in the directory "/opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/ports/net/":
libnasl/Portfile
nessus-libraries/Portfile
nessus-core/Portfile


After these changes it compiled and installed fine:

polaris:bin nuil$ sudo port install nessus-core

[...]

polaris:bin nuil$ nessus --version
nessus (Nessus) 2.2.6 for Darwin

(C) 1998 - 2003 Renaud Deraison 
	SSL used for client - server communication