Check that the vpn is up and running in nagios
A problem I had to deal with once, was to be able to use nagios to know when the VPN stopped working. The conflict I had by just using simple private network ping checks is that I was unable to easily tell at first glance whether it was the VPN that had a problem or the whole network.
Thus, I wrote this little script that receives three arguments and is able to tell whether it is actually the VPN that has any problems. Besides, it also checks for packet loss and is able to detect if the whole public network goes down.
The three arguments that receives this check are the following:
- Public IP Address: A public IP address to ping in order to know whether the network is working properly.
- Private (VPN) IP Address: A private network IP address to ping in order to know whether the VPN is working properly.
- Number of pings: Total number of pings to send in order to know more about packet loss.
The check issues a CRITICAL only if there is 100% ICMP loss while pinging the private network and the public network is suffering less than 100% ICMP loss.
The check issues a WARNING if either the public or the private or both IP addresses suffer any kind of packet loss. It also issues a WARNING if the public network suffers 100% ICMP loss.
You can download the full source code for this check in the following link: check_vpn
Fight against Nintendo’s DRM on the 3DS by sending them bricks!
Unless you haven't heard already, Nintendo is very eager to brick their user's Nintendo 3DS. They have implemented DRM so hard on it that it is extremely easy to brick it.
As a counter-measure and an act of protest, Defective By Design is collecting donations to send real bricks to Nintendo. Join the cause! It's just $10.
Operation Payback : Visa DOWN
After taking down www.mastercard.com the whole day, Anonymous has taken it with the other credit card provider, www.visa.com, for their aggressions on WikiLeaks. As of now, www.visa.com is under heavy DDoS and completely inaccessible. It is expected that both MasterCard and Visa change their minds and start fighting the government of the USA instead of blocking the defenders of freedom and truth.
In case you want to join the fight, watch your back.
Too long have we writhed with disgust and discontent. Today, we observe the swells beginning to break and the tides beginning to change. Julian Assange, Jay Applebaum, Bradley Manning, and the others who helped provide such a trove of information, are now facing utter persecution. The COICA legislation further threatens our right to access deserved data. You will never strip us of the information we deserve, your attempts to do so will be quelled with an unparalleled avidity. Fight for the User. When the kernel goes awry, then it's time for a fresh install. This system is, and always will be, ours. I say we fight. I say we show the oppressive forces, who are ceaslessy trying to suppress the cyber world, just how much clout we have.
We are Anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget.
WWW.ANONOPS.NET || IRC.ANONOPS.NET #operationpayback
Operation Payback : MasterCard DOWN
Anonymous guys have been performing for some hours now a DDoS attack on www.mastercard.com. Several web sites have already announced the news. The fight is still going on, to take down all those that oppose WikiLeaks. As of now, sources say that the attack on www.mastercard.com (fully inaccessible) will not cease until the stocks of MasterCard plummet.
In case you want to join the fight, watch your back.
Too long have we writhed with disgust and discontent. Today, we observe the swells beginning to break and the tides beginning to change. Julian Assange, Jay Applebaum, Bradley Manning, and the others who helped provide such a trove of information, are now facing utter persecution. The COICA legislation further threatens our right to access deserved data. You will never strip us of the information we deserve, your attempts to do so will be quelled with an unparalleled avidity. Fight for the User. When the kernel goes awry, then it's time for a fresh install. This system is, and always will be, ours. I say we fight. I say we show the oppressive forces, who are ceaslessy trying to suppress the cyber world, just how much clout we have.
We are Anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget.
WWW.ANONOPS.NET || IRC.ANONOPS.NET #operationpayback
Disgusted with the Spanish government
I am very disgusted with the Spanish government and their later actions. I bought a couple of books and two T-shirts from the USA, the books from O'Reilly and the T-shirts from Valve.
The books I bought are Learning Python, 4Ed for $54.99 and Python for Unix and Linux System Administration, 1Ed for $49.99. I payed $39.48 for International Air Shipping.
The T-shirts I bought are the Portal 2 Logo T-shirt for $19.99 and Portal 2 Test Candidate Shirt for $19.99, as well. I payed $20.00 for International Air Shipping.
These two companies did not respect what they claimed and used DHL instead. The guys from DHL are not very smart as they go through customs, which is not really compulsory for low cost purchases for personal use.
Besides, the Spanish government has changed their laws. Formerly, they were imposing duty tolls on purchases of value above 150€. They changed it, and now they impose a duty tall to packages from the USA of 19.50€ + 18% from anything worth 22.00€ or more.
My T-shirts cost $39.98 plus $20.00 for shipping and I have to pay around $35 more for them. That's 33% more. What a shame!
This abhorrent measure from the Spanish government is seriously shameless. Besides pulling of lots of money of my salary by their ridiculously high taxes and their miserable social security system, I am now forced to pay absurdly elevated duty tolls for books and clothes. This is so unacceptable and plain wrong. Why don't they tax themselves with their excessive salaries instead?
This is just so frustrating.
Looking for an OVH-like provider in the USA or Canada
This time, let me be the one asking for info to my readers. If you know anything about this, please let me know!
I have been looking around a little for a provider just like OVH but located in the USA or in Canada, but I was not really successful. The closest thing I found is FDC Servers, but I am not happy enough with it, because their pricing is quiet higher than OVH.
GUADEC streamed live in WebM using Flumotion
GUADEC (GNOME Users’ And Developers’ European Conference) of this year, 2010, is being streamed live from several locations (Paris, Copenhagen and Seville) in WebM format using Flumotion and the Flumotion Streaming Platform.
It is amazing to be able to finally start streaming in an open format, no more flash! Remember that you need Firefox 4 or Opera 10.60.
You can find more details about the event and about the streaming here.
You can use the following URLs to watch it live:
Enjoy the live streaming!!!
Frustrated with Vodafone and the Nexus One FroYo 2.2 update
Some sources have leaked that Vodafone is delaying the OTA release of FroYo to all Nexus One mobiles in Europe that were purchased through them for two more weeks. They promised to leave the firmware intact and now they have changed their minds and are modifying it!
They apparently say they are "improving" it so that emergency calls and "other small issues" work properly with their network. I am personally afraid they're gonna nerf some functionality or add some sort of restrictions.
This is just frustrating!
Call for help! Looking for contributors for pylsyncd : Python Live Syncing Daemon
Are you looking for a fast and reliable solution to keep contents synchronized among different systems in different locations? Either if you want to synchronize a few contents or even several terabytes of data, pylsyncd may be the right solution for you.
The application pylsyncd stands for Python Live Syncing Daemon and is a clear alternative to lsyncd. At a lower level, pylsyncd is written in python. It uses pyinotify to detect changes in the files and then launches rsync processes to keep everything properly synchronized.
Apart from being way more efficient than it's C-programmed counterpart, pylsyncd offers many more features and mechanisms that improve both performance and reliability, being the main advantage of pylsyncd against lsyncd is that it uses message queues in order to synchronize in a parallel way several destination servers, saving up time when it is required to have more than one destination. It has been tested in heavy loaded environments of over 70TeraBytes.
At this stage, we have tested thoroughly each and any part of pylsyncd. We have several people from all over the world using pylsyncd in production for over half a year now, with no issues, under heavy load environments, moving several TeraBytes of data. There are already some contributors to the source code, but we are looking to expand our community and make this promising project even larger.
Either if you could ever be a potential user of this application or not, if you are somewhat skilled in python, you are very welcome to come by and give us a hand, not only by improving the source code, applying QA or making performance tweaks. There are a lot of features that still need to be implemented.
We count on you!
Finally a graphics card for Linux that works flawlessly with compiz and is lightning fast
After years of struggling and looking around, I have finally found a graphics card that works flawlessly when running compiz under Linux and that processes all the effects at lightning speed. I've never seen something like this for that reasonable price!