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iPod torment

Apple iPod is very fractious device, and you should be certain in all your actions when you working with it. It so happened that all music on iPod is disappear (probably after incorrect ejecting). Although during connection to Rhythmbox everything was fine (playlists and songs were working properly), the device itself showed "No Music". Digging the Internet showed that the only true way to fix it is repairing using iTunes. But unfortunately iTunes is working only in Windows and MacOSX, neither of these I have. So I tried to find another way. Further digging lead me to this article. So I downloaded Floola and started it (please notice that it is required to have libstdc++-compat libraries installed). Floola didn't find iPod in its database and I had to enter required generation (using info from wikipedia ) and fwid (16 digit number from "sudo /sbin/lsusb -v | grep -i Serial"). Floola tried to open iPod with this info, but it doesn't help and it closed wi...
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Playing with NuFW firewall.

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I have played with NuFW live CD and want to share my experience. NuFW is an application layer firewall with authentication support. It allows to build SSO-based infrastructure with minimal efforts. NuFW adds user-based filtering to Netfilter, the state of the art IP filtering layer from the Linux kernel. NuFW live CD provided web-based management system for setting up network, ACL, objects and all required rules. You can see a sample screenshot of editing ACL rule. Please notice that LiveCD is not working so stable, so be ready for certain glitches. Further I'll describe sample steps for setting up firewall for certain users. First, let's set up new user account. NuFW Live CD use only local users by default, but NuFW itself support LDAP directories. So I'll create an account via KUser. Second step - create an authenticate object in Nuface: And the last step - add ACL for the user: As you can see there are nothing special in such actions. Unfortunately, I...
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Google Reader shared items

I have began to share my Google Reader items which are accessible on this page: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/08144242512191999080 Maybe you will find some interesting for you from these items. Happy reading!
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New Mail Dispatcher executable

I have created Windows installer package for current version of Mail Dispatcher: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/maildispatcher/maildispatcher-0.3.exe It is built with slightly outdated Python and GTK, so I have not updated the project site with this new link. After releasing new version of Mail Dispatcher I'll release a new Windows installer package built with updated frameworks.
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XSL transformations in Python

I want to describe how to do XSL transformations in Python by using 4Suite . It is a really easy, and requires just a few steps: Install 4Suite technologies for Python: $ sudo yum install python-4Suite-XML Create a required XML file (for example, simple1.xml): <!-- The stylesheet to apply --> <?xml-stylesheet href="simple.xsl" type="text/xsl"?> <document cache-methods="get,post"> <title>Simple XSLT sample</title> <body> <heading>Simple XSLT sample</heading> <paragraph> This is a sample text. </paragraph> </body> </document> Create a required XSL file (for example, simple1.xsl): <xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0"> <!-- Output an XHTML/transitional document (uses html output method ...
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Backup LVM file system with SELinux context

Backup is one of the most crucial operations for providing availability of the computer system. Although writing backup scripts is an easy task, there are few points with LVM and SELinux which are described below. LVM is a logical volume manager for the Linux kernel. One of the key features of LVM is generating snapshots for logical volumes. This allows the administrator to create a new block device which presents an exact copy of a logical volume, frozen at some point in time. It is very useful for backups - we can make backups without stopping volumes. Snapshots can be created with 'lvcreate' command with '-s' option. SELinux is an implementation of a flexible mandatory access control architecture in the Linux operating system. It uses file labelling with special security context. During a usual file archiving this context could be lost, so the administrator should use special archivers like 'star'. So, the administrator should use following procedure for a...
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Organizing Kerberos-based infrastructure

SSO ( Single Sign-On ) is a good method for organizing enterprise-level IT infrastructure. It can reduce TCO ( Total cost of ownership ) of user management, allowing to create/modify/delete user accounts in one place without changing configurations of servers and client workstations. Let's consider Kerberos as a basis for SSO in an enterprise infrastructure in details: Log in to a workstation. Most UNIX-based OS provide authorization mechanism for logging into a workstation using Kerberos PAM modules. Windows OS-based workstations can login only to domain controller, and doesn't support standard Kerberos servers by default due to Kerberos extensions by Microsoft. But there is a bypass way - use Samba PDC with Kerberos and OpenLDAP integration ( Article in Russian , I'll translate and publish it in the blog after setting up such infrastructure on my servers). Servers. Firewall: NuFW (see corresponding article ). Email: postfix, sendmail. IM: openfire. Web: apache....
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