So i write a lot of puppet code these days to automate infrastructure stuff that i do, and it came to me that every time i have to make an addition/change to my puppet code i always run syntax checking with the “puppet apply” command, so why not automate this procedure and use the beautiful Growl notifications on my Mac in order to get instant desktop notification with the output of puppet manifests syntax checking

Introducing Puppet-growl

• Puppet-growl is a ruby script that watches if there is any changes to your puppet manifests (by monitoring .pp files) and sends notifications to your desktop if the puppet manifest you just created/edited passes the syntax checks or not.
• It aims to facilitate the development of puppet code by sending instant notifications to your OS X desktop.
• puppet-growl uses eventmachine, em-dir-watcher and ruby-growl

For installation/configuration, please visit the puppet-growl on github: http://github.com/AhmedElGamil/puppet-growl

I would love to see someone hack the script to add libnotify support for the Linux desktop.

Thanks for Mohammed Safwat and Karim Allah Ahmed for hacking around the code with me.

So i had this situation where i have 2 Asterisk boxes, the 1st one of them had a PRI card and the 2nd one is just attached to the network through an ethernet card

Goal: redirect all of the incoming calls on the PRI to the 2nd Asterisk box through a SIP Trunk (The 2nd box holds the IVR and all of those stuff, all of the IP phones are connecting to this one), There was no decent documentation about this out there so i am documenting this and may be someone will find it useful.

Here is what you should do (I am assuming you are using an Asterisk installation that uses FreePBX):

• Create the Zap Trunk as you normally do from the FreePBX interface: Trunks -> Add Zap Trunk
• Create a SIP trunk that points to the 2nd Asterisk box, we will use this Trunk later in the configuration: Trunks -> Add SIP Trunk, scroll down to outgoing settings and add the following
  • Trunk name: to-2ndAsterisk
  • Peer details:

type=peer

host=<IP Address of 2nd Asterisk Box>

• Connect to the 1st Asterisk box using SSH and edit the file /etc/asterisk/dahdi-channels.conf, you will find some configuration like

group=0,11

context=from-pstn

switchtype = euroisdn

signalling = pri_cpe

channel => 1-15,17-31

context = default

group = 63

• So as you can see all of the incoming calls are directed to the from-pstn context, we will now edit this line to direct the calls to the from-pstn-custom context and do the rest of the magic in this context so the file should be as follows

group=0,11

context=from-pstn-custom

switchtype = euroisdn

signalling = pri_cpe

channel => 1-15,17-31

context = default

group = 63

• Now edit the file /etc/asterisk/extensions_custom.conf and add the following at the end of the file

[from-pstn-custom]
exten => _.,1,Dial(SIP/to-2ndAsterisk/${EXTEN:2},20,rt)

So what this does is that it matches all of the calls (_.) then redirect them through the SIP trunk to the 2nd Asterisk box

• And the last step is to allow calls coming from the 1st Box to the 2nd Box, you should do IP-based authentication on the 2nd box by editing /etc/asterisk/sip_custom.conf and add the following

[1stAsterisk]
type=peer
canreinvite=no
host=<IP Address of 1st Asterisk Box>
context=from-pstn
nat=no
dtmfmode=rfc2833
disallow=all
allow=ulaw
insecure=port
qualify=yes

Of course you can now create any inbound routes on the 2nd Asterisk Box to match your needs.

I hope this works for you, and if you need any assistance please don’t hesitate to ask me in the comments

Thanks for listening

After having some problems trying to install Adobe Air under my Fedora 12 installation, here is the what you should do to get it up and running:

• Install the following packages usign YUM

yum install gtk2-devel rpm-devel xterm

• Solve the certificates issue using the command

for c in /etc/opt/Adobe/certificates/crypt/*.0; do aucm -n $(basename $c) -t true; done

• Now you can navigate to where you download the binary and then do the following

chmod +x AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

BTW, this was under a 32-bit installation.

Hope this solves the problem.

Since this blog was starting to be full of ghosts, i said that i must break the silence by some quick post.

Last Saturday I attended the JDC 2010 (Java Developer Conference) which is organized by EGJUG , I attended the last JDC which was at 2008 and it was pretty good and after looking at the agenda of 2010, i just couldn’t resist

Most of the sessions were quite interesting, i got to know some of the new technologies and made some good contacts with great people in the industry here in Egypt.

I also bought an excellent book “Secrets of the Rock Star Programmers” by Ed Burns who was a speaker at the conference (and he was also a speaker at 2008), and he signed it for me , Thanks Ed.

After the conference we had a quick visit to Google

Actually that was at the Google Booth , Some of the Google guys were there like AbdelKarim Mardini showing the new Nexus one and some other cool stuff.

A lot of interesting people was there like Sang Shin, Fred Sauer, also from Egypt Mohammed El-Refaey whom i really enjoyed talking to.

So in the end, it was a pretty good day and meeting a lot of my friends added a tasty flavour to the mixture, JAK Shabab.

Time to move on and finish that piles of work to do !

الحمد لله و كفى و صلاة و سلاماً على عباده الذين اصطفى

EDIT: Added the solution at the end of the post

So i have been navigating through my home directory and i found a hidden directory (which starts with a dot .) and i found a directory called .purple..Hmm, i don’t remember installing an application called purple..

So after some searching i found that the .purple directory contains some files related to pidgin The universal Instant messaging client..okay this sounds reasonable now..the pidgin color is purple

okay..before you read any further in this topic please open a terminal in your Linux distro and execute the following command:

cat ~/.purple/acc* | grep “ord>”

YES, the output you have seen from this command is REAL !! ..It is your IM passwords

I used some bash tricks to hide what the command really do..but here is what it will really do

cat ~/.purple/accounts.xml | grep password

and if you are using window$, you will find it in C:Documents and Settings%USERNAME%Application Data.purpleaccounts.xml

What are we having here ? , well pidgin is not saving the passwords in encrypted format, it is saving them in clear text !

So beware.. don’t save your password on pidgin when using a shared machine with someone else

Solution

First of all, lets see why did the pidgin team decided not to encrypt the passwords, actually they talked about lots of issue, but to summarize, Here is a quote from their wiki:

Instant messaging is not very secure, and it’s kind of pointless to spend a lot of time adding protections onto the fairly strong file protections of UNIX (our native platform) when the protocols themselves aren’t all that secure

Edit: Kamasheto added the following quote in the comments, thanks kama

“But other programs don’t store my password in plain text!”

That’s true. But few of them store it in a way that’s any safer. A Google search for im passwords shows a bunch of hits for getting the passwords out of other IM clients just as easily as Pidgin.

so they advice you to use key rings that comes with your desktop environment (GNOME and KDE have key rings), there is a project discussing this issue here

Another solution is use a master password mechanism, like that one implemented in firefox, you can use this feature in pidgin by install the Password Encryption plugin

Hope this tips will solve the problem isA

سبحانك اللهم و بحمدك..أشهد ان لا إله إلا أنت..أستغفرك و أتوب إليك

Google just released an updated version of the Google Mobile App, but now with Voice search !

You just say the keywords in your voice and the app does all the work

The new Google Mobile App for iPhone makes it possible for you to do a Google web search using only your voice. Just hold the phone to your ear, wait for the beep, and say what you’re looking for. That’s it. Just talk. Once the App is on, you don’t have to push any buttons to search. Check out the video below to watch engineer Mike LeBeau explain how this works.

Here is a video from youtube that explains it very well:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3z7Tw1K17A

سبحانك اللهم و بحمدك..أشهد أن لا اله إلا أنت..أستغفرك و أتوب إليك

So i have been working with a small personal coding project the last days, and i noticed that i will be distributing the code among several directories and files and i also need to go forward and backward in the code revisions, so i decided to get started with Subversion - The version control system.

I had some problems at first, then things started to get really good after some searching for information here and there, so here is a simple tutorial that will get you up with subversion in no time isA

First of all, What is Version control ?

Revision control (also known as version control (system) (VCS), source control or (source) code management (SCM)) is the management of multiple revisions of the same unit of information

Changes to these documents are usually identified by incrementing an associated number or letter code, termed the “revision number”, “revision level”, or simply “revision” and associated historically with the person making the change

So how does this apply to coding and source code, well, when you are working with lots of code some times you need to know how did the code look like at a specific time or specific “version”.

also when there is more than one person collabarating to the same project, you need to know who changed that specific piece of code, when he did he changed it and if he commented on the change so you can know about his work

Here is a nice video on youtube than explains the issue in a very simple scenario

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wYiabh2hpM

Cool, What is Subversion ?

Subversion (SVN) is a version control system initiated in 2000 by CollabNet Inc. It is used to maintain current and historical versions of files such as source code, web pages, and documentation. Its goal is to be a mostly-compatible successor to the widely used Concurrent Versions System (CVS).

SVN is an Open source software and it is currently replacing the CVS

What are the ingredients that i need to start working with SubVersion ?

The Server

First, you need a SVN Server (SVN works on server/client architecture), which basically contains some kind of a database that holds information about the different “revisions” of your code

we will skip setting up the server part as we will be using a hosted service on a remote server (note that you can actually build one on your local machine).

I have searched for a lot of online services and i think the best one that fitted my needs is XP-Dev.com

Go register an account there, and after logging in create a SubVersion repo from the “subversion” tab

after you create the repo, you will get the following URLs

https://svn.xp-dev.com/svn/repo_name/ (SSL)
http://svn.xp-dev.com/svn/repo_name/ (No SSL)

So these are the URLs that you can use to access the files in the repo and also use with SVN client

The Client

The client is used to connect to the SVN server, at our case we will be using the svn command under UNIX/Linux based systems, if you want a GUI you can use RapidSVN under Linux and TorsieSVN under windows

We will be discussing the Client in the next Post isA

Please share your comments on the materials presented here , may be we will put it in the Hackers Wiki if it is good enough

سبحانك اللهم و بحمدك..أشهد ان لا اله الا أنت..أستغفرك و أتوب إليك

الحمد لله و كفى و صلاةً و سلاماً على عباده الذين اصطفى..ثم أما بعد

امبارح كان Hackers Day رقم 2 و الحمد لله كان كويس جداً
 و كل الsession اللى فيه كانت قوية جداً و مفيدة..

انا اديت فيه سيشن بعنوان

"Hacking Wireless Networks: A live demo"

عموماً..بدايتى مع ال wireless networking مكملتش 8 شهور

إلا انى من ساعة مع كان لى نصيب انى اتعامل

wireless router

 و الموضوع كان شاددنى جداً

أتمنى انى اكون قدرت انفع الناس..

انا عارف ان كمية المعلومات كانت تقيلة و انا كنت بتكلم بسرعة حبتين  

ده غير كمية المصطلحات الانجليزى الفظيعة اللى قلتها  

أهم حاجة بس تفتكرها ان أقوى طريقة عشان تحمى بيها أى نظم بتستخدمها

هى انك تهاك على نفسك :mrgreen:

Secure your wireless Network Using offensive security

اوعى تستخدم WEP Encryption

و علشان تحمى ال Access Point بتاعتك استعمل WPA/WPA2

و أختار password متكونش dictionary word يعنى مثلاً

a-vk, 3wq5

بالنسبة للpresentation هتلاقوها هنا

  هبقا هعدل التدوينة دى عشان احط قائمة بالكتب اللى قرأتها فى الموضوع ده

سبحانك اللهم و بحمدك..أشهد أن لا إلا أنت..أستغفرك و أتوب اليك