The Old Monk

... or is it April 1st already? We have IE passing the ACID2 test, and the possibility ( youtube link ) of Duke Nukem Forever!

I finally built a frame! It's not done yet - I still have to paint it. Getting clean cuts was a problem initially, but less than I had imagined. Even if a cut isn't perfectly clean, you can get away with filing a wood putty. Sanding turned out to be more work than I had thought. What remains is painting the frame, and getting a secondary, larger 'frame' on tha back - in lieu of a rabbet to hold the glass, photo and backing.

Lessons learnt - if you can still see the adhesive tube open, make sure you have the gloves on! Also, think about the measurements at least twice - draw the whole thing on paper first - you'll save a lot of time and material.

I have a Motorola A1200, and I use it sometimes to connect via GPRS. The phone is set to USB mode 'modem', and appears as /dev/ttyACM0 on my box. Here's my /etc/wvdial.conf :

[Dialer Defaults]
Init1 = ATZ
Modem Type = USB Modem
Phone = *99#
New PPPD = yes
Modem = /dev/ttyACM0
Username = guest
Password = guest
Baud = 115200
Stupid Mode = on
Carrier Check = no
Idle Seconds = 0
Abort on No Dialtone = no

There's one more catch - apparently, pppd requires an IP at the local end as well. To that end, add a line in your /etc/ppp/options file :

:192.168.0.254

My setup works wonderfully after this. If you still have problems, try adding '-vj' to the ppp options file, to disable IP header compression negotiation.

I got a new camera. Canon EOS 5D. I only have the 50mm f/1.8 lens though. More lenses will come when I have more money.

Yeah. I was at FOSS.in 2007, and I attended Rusty's Talk. I asked a couple of questions, and he gave me a chocolate. See:

There are of course various ways to set up an encrypted home directory. Here's mine.

I use encfs, which is a FUSE filesystem. This might be better as a step by step HOWTO.

1. Make sure you have a big enough partition where the actual encrypted data would be stored. Make an entry in /etc/fstab mounting it at /real_home.

2. Make user directories in /real_home/. The only one I have is mine, /real_home/gera/

3. On the / filesystem, make a stub directory /home/gera - this will be the mountpoint for the encrypted filesystem.

4. Set up encfs - something like

$ encfs /real_home/gera /home/gera

You can choose the preconfigured paranoia mode.

5. install pam_encfs. The standard config will do, with very few changes. Here's mine :

gera@gera-laptop:~$ cat /etc/security/pam_encfs.conf | egrep -v '^(#|$)'
drop_permissions
encfs_default --idle=1
fuse_default nonempty
gera            /real_home/gera /home/gera      -v,--idle=1     allow_other,nonempty

Note the "allow_other" option. X will give you trouble if you don't do that.

6. Modify the common-auth and common-session files in /etc/pam.d - here are mine :

gera@gera-laptop:~$ cat /etc/pam.d/common-auth | egrep -v '^(#|$)'
auth    sufficient      pam_encfs.so
auth    required        pam_unix.so nullok_secure use_first_pass

gera@gera-laptop:~$ cat /etc/pam.d/common-session | egrep -v '^(#|$)'
session required        pam_encfs.so
session required        pam_unix.so
session optional        pam_foreground.so

7. Now you're set. You can log in from a console and the encrypted partition will be mounted at $HOME. Go ahead, try it. I said console. GDM doesn't work yet. For that, there are a couple of more tweaks.

8. Edit /etc/security/pam_env.conf to set up your ICEAUTHORITY environment variable. When you're logging in, your $HOME doesn't have the .ICEAuthority file, and GDM/Gnome fail. We'll tell them to look for it in an alternate location. Here's my /etc/security/pam_env.conf :

gera@gera-laptop:~$ cat /etc/security/pam_env.conf | egrep -v '^(#|$)'
LOGNAME         DEFAULT="gera"  OVERRIDE=${LOGNAME}
ICEAUTHORITY    DEFAULT=/real_home/${LOGNAME}/.ICEauthority

9. Try it out. If something doesn't work, please let me know. I might have forgotten something. Oh, and remember to set a root password on ditros like Ubuntu which encourage only the sudo way. I'd also recommend keeping a root session open in a console (or two) during this whole setup, in case anything goes wrong.

It should be clear that these are guidelines only. I am an idiot, and shouldn't be held responsible if you lose your data, your hardware, your privacy, or your job. Proceed at your own risk. :)