We are either lazy and tend to repeat same passwords all over again in different websites or we just try to use variations of a few passwords so that we can keep them in our memory . I confess I have been using this method with the not so important websites that I use, reserving some strong password (and memorizing them) for some of the most important websites. I have even written about different ways in which you can have a strong password based on a pattern and some specific bits of information.

Up until a few months ago I was using this method but then I became more security concious and started using a password manager to store all my passwords, having updated the passwords on most of the websites I use. The way a password manager works is by storing all your passwords on an encrypted database file on disk so you can access all of them if you provide the master password. Thus, this master password needs to be strong enough. Now, this is all very well, but it’s useless if you keep your database at home and you are on the move or at work, etc.

So, what I’ve found useful is that keeping my encrypted file in a private folder on Dropbox works best, as that means that I can have that file everywhere on my computers giving me the flexibility of accessing it anywhere. You can even choose a password manager that works in all major operating systems so you are not limited by OS.

And before you tell me that this could be insecure if there are key loggers in action or any other kind of compromised system, yes, there’s a risk of handing in all your passwords. but, well, you need to find a compromise between being totally paranoid and keeping your passwords in a fire-proof safe and having all the websites sharing the same password . I’m a bit paranoid, so I don’t store really important passwords there, like my Gmail accounts, bank accounts, etc. Your mileage may vary, so use with caution.

If you have any other suggestions, please let me know as I’m interested in other ways in which you guys have solved this problem, if solved at all

Hot to fix this? Well, just like with any of these things, they usually load a javascript file. So, let’s just not load it:

First of all, edit /etc/hosts and add a line like 127.0.0.1 spa.snap.com:

sudo vi /etc/hosts

which should end like:

127.0.0.1 spa.snap.com

Better now!

• Works with newer versions of Mozilla firefox and thunderbird (Including version 3 beta 4)
• It’s got really nice colours and  a nice layout.
• It works fine under linux and Mac OS X. In the latter it lets you have small icons in the bookmark bar, whereas the default theme does not allow you to do that. See image to see what I mean.
• You’ve got two different colours to choose from.

So go and buy the guy a beer so he can work more on them .

[golan@mars ~] % HEAD http://roncero.org/blog/
200 OK
Cache-Control: max-age=260, must-revalidate
Connection: close
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2009 21:35:09 GMT
Server: nginx
Vary: Cookie
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Last-Modified: Thu, 15 Oct 2009 21:34:29 +0000
Client-Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2009 21:35:09 GMT
Client-Peer: 76.74.254.123:80
Client-Response-Num: 1
Link: ; rel=shortlink
X-Hacker: If you're reading this, you should visit automattic.com/jobs and apply to join the fun, mention this header.
X-Nananana: Batcache
X-Pingback: http://blog.roncero.org/xmlrpc.php

So, apart from various bits of information (nginx), what I really really liked was the X-Hacker header . Fancy a job?

Update: The invitations are gone.

Whether having issues with the router it’s not nice, I like this approach where they admit the fault and show that they are taking the necessary steps to fix it. Kudos.

Every link should work, even considering the URL schema has changed a little bit (removed the /archive/ bit), but it’s handled perfectly. Kudos to WordPress.com.

• Go to any page with lots of images.
• Delete the URL bar
• Substitute it with:

javascript:R=0; x1=.1; y1=.05; x2=.25; y2=.24; x3=1.6; y3=.24; x4=300;y4=200; x5=300; y5=200; DI=document.images; DIL=DI.length; function A(){for(i=0; i-DIL; i++){DIS=DI[ i ].style; DIS.position='absolute'; DIS.left=(Math.sin(R*x1+i*x2+x3)*x4+x5)+"px"; DIS.top=(Math.cos(R*y1+i*y2+y3)*y4+y5)+"px"}R++}setInterval('A()',5); void(0)

Press Enter and enjoy!!!

I first knew about internet radio by listening to Soma FM back in 2001 or 2002. It was pretty cool by then.

Lately I’ve been using Last FM quite a lot. I find it quite nice the way they have everything set up. They have a nice mp3 player with which you can listen to the music they are constantly streaming. Not only that, you can listen to different kinds of music at any time, searching it by artists or by music tags. It’s also a social website where you can see what your friends have been listening to lately or even get recommendations based on the music you’ve been listening to.

Anyway, I believe that it is pretty cool and I’ve just subscribed for 6 months so I can test it, but primarily to support them. Keep on with the good work

To avoid this scenario we need to set things up in a way that users can commit to the main repository but cannot have access to the remote repository. And that, again, can be done by creating a different user (Remember, all this applies to the main repository box, not the remote box).
Say:

• svn: The user used for the repository. It will let any user have write permission on the repository. It will also have all the public keys of all the committers, to allow them to access the server using the svn+ssh authentication under the generic user svn, in case it needs to be retrieved from a remote location, which can be easily used by forwarding your credentials.
• svnsync: A user which will have access to the repository (read access is enough) and will have a couple of wrapper scripts to svnsync. It will use a ssh key to access the remote repository. The rest of the users will have no read permissions on this user’s home directory.
• The rest of the users for the committers. They will have write access to the repository. As you may know, if you use svn+ssh authentication, whenever you do a commit, you basically are executing svnserve on the repositoy under your user ID (That’s why you need write permissions).

This way, committers won’t have access to the svnsync private key. But we must grant them access to the wrapper scripts, so whenever they do a commit, svnserve is able to execute those scripts by triggering a post-commit hook.

All these can be achieved by using sudo. So, say that we have two different wrapper scripts:

• /home/svnsync/bin/synccommit.sh
  

  #!/bin/bash
  # this is to synchronize the repostory
  # $1 will be the repository
  if [[ -z $1 ]]
    then
      # The repository should be a parameter
      exit
  fi
  
  DATE=`date +%Y%m%d-%H%M `
  
  echo "[$DATE] Commiting to repository $1 . (output below if any)" >> /home/svnsync/svnsync-commit.log 2>&1
  /usr/local/bin/svnsync synchronize --username svnsync "$1" >> /home/svnsync/svnsync-commit.log 2>&1
  

• /home/svnsync/bin/syncprop.sh
  

  #!/bin/bash
  # this is to synchronize the a property
  
  # $1 will be the repository
  # $2 will be the revision number
  
  if [[ -z $1 || -z $2 ]]
    then
      # The repository should be a parameter
      exit
  fi
  
  DATE=`date +%Y%m%d-%H%M `
  echo "[$DATE] Updating property (Revision $2) to repository $1 . (output below if any)" >> /home/svnsync/svnsync-properties.log 2>&1
  /usr/local/bin/svnsync copy-revprops --username svnsync "$1" "$2"  >> /home/svnsync/svnsync-properties.log 2>&1
  

We can call them by setting up the hook scripts as:

# Propagate the data to the remote repository
sudo -u svnsync /home/svnsync/bin/synccommit.sh svn+ssh://svnsync@remote/home/svnsync/svn &

# Propagating changes to the remote repository. Putting it to the background
sudo -u svnsync /home/svnsync/bin/syncprop.sh svn+ssh://svnsync@remote/home/svnsync/svn $REV  &

%commiters  ALL= (svnsync) NOPASSWD: /home/svnsync/bin/syncprop.sh
svn         ALL= (svnsync) NOPASSWD: /home/svnsync/bin/syncprop.sh

Where committers is a common group where all committers belong to.
]]> http://blog.notreally.org/2006/12/13/more-on-setting-a-subversion-mirror-repository/feed/ 1 golan