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Unable to login to a new install of openembedded 2007.12 due to this strange bug where a blank root password is created by default but is unacceptable.

The solution:

generates an MD5 hash for the password (in this case, ‘password’) which is then copied into the ‘root’ entry in /etc/passwd

nb you should never use “password” as your password, Nicky

Baffled by my inability to reconfigure apache .htaccess to symlink to an NTFS mounted through fuse…

Options +FollowSymLinks

Just doesn’t seem to work.
However, the permissions on the target need to be set so the www-data user can read the files, and by default this is set umask 007, giving

tim@herge:~$ ls /media -la
total 48
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 2010-05-28 17:29 .
drwxr-xr-x 22 root root 4096 2010-06-02 12:53 ..
drwxrwx--- 1 root plugdev 28672 2010-06-01 15:55 data

Which isn’t readable by apache. Ths solution? Edit /etc/fstab to something like

# /media/data was on /dev/sda4 during installation
UUID=0068197468196A24 /media/data ntfs defaults,nls=utf8,umask=000,gid=46 0 0

And Apache can follow the symlink to your hearts content.

-Manually add the udev rules from http://oozie.fm.interia.pl/src/huawei.tar.bz2

- compile huaweiAktBbo.c from this bitbake recipe and install it (see http://www.kanoistika.sk/bobovsky/archiv/umts/ )

- Attach the device

- modprobe usbserial vendor=0×12d1 product=0×1003

- If necessary compile execute huaweiAktBbo (it doesnt hurt to run it always)

With Ubuntu 9.10 there are several changes needed to get a Angstrom 2007.12 bitbake target to compile.

Downgrade gcc to 4.2 (sudo ln -sf /usr/bin/gcc-4.2 /usr/bin/gcc)
You might need to install gcc-4.2
(You can change back to gcc 4.4 afterwards)

Link sh to bash (sudo dpkg-reconfigure dash, choose ‘no’)

The build will fail on unifdef.c a couple of times. Each time the downloaded file needs to be patched thus:

1- tmp/work/i686-linux/unifdef-native-2.6.18+git-r0/unifdef.c
2- tmp/work/armv5teb-angstrom-linux-gnueabi/linux-libc-headers-2.6.20-r8/linux-2.6.20/scripts/unifdef.c

Open unifdef.c and Replace getline( with parseline(
(name clash)

I’m working on the sound reactive element of Make a bigger splash!

I’ve incorporated two measurement microphones (thanks Dennis!) -one in the atrium with the installation (its actually hanging within the sculpture), and one in the pool itself. These will support the two seperate modes of animating the installation.

In order to design the interaction, I’ve set up a server to receive the audio from the mics and stream it over wi-fi using pds netsend~/netreceive~ objects.

Walking around the building wearing headphones and listening to this, I had one of those revalation moments that make being a techno-artist worthwhile. It was just like I was crawling around inside my own head..

Work on rigging Make a bigger splash! continues at Claremorris leisure centre.

The installation has 35 neon tubes in all, and will feature 2 types of sound-activated animation of the 3D neon drawing.

The structure has to support 200kgs of transformers, and its 8m in the air.

Phew.

I’m testing the control system for Make a bigger splash!

The neon tubes are powered by ‘metalbox’ transformers and ‘neonline’ dimmers.

The dimmerboxes take a 10v analogue control signal from a showtec multi-exchanger, which is a dmx controller for analogue lighting gear.

The dmx signals come from an enttec open dmx ethernet unit, controlled by the artnet protocol via ethernet.

I have written a puredata external to output artnet packets, based on the pd netsend object by Miller Puckette. Open source is great.

And it worked first time I plugged it all together..

The ‘Duh worm’ exploit as reported by the bbc, affects only jailbroken iphones with openSSH installed, and installs software which spreads to other iphones, monitoring smses and details entered whilst banking online. While presently only affecting iphone users in the Netherlands, it seems likely that a version could easily be tailored to any phone network.

The exploit spreads because all iphones normally use the same root password- ‘alpine’, and while this is not normally a problem as there is no way to log into an unmodified iphone from a console, when openSSH is installed from the jailbroken appstore ‘cydia’, it allows full control of the phone through this open door.

However, openSSH is not a standard feature installed when jailbreaking an iphone. Cydia users have to choose to install it, it is made very clear that its only purpose is to allow network login to the device, and moreover, the installer page instracts the user to change passwords immediately. Considering the type of user who uses iphone openSSH, (me for example) this instruction is very likely to be followed.

What is interesting is the way this was reported by reuters, and by many other online news sites such as The Irish Times.

“The vast majority of customers do not jailbreak their iPhones, and for good reason. These hacks not only violate the warranty, they will also cause the iPhone to become unstable and not work reliably,” said Apple spokeswoman Natalie Harrison.”

“The only iPhones that are vulnerable to the Duh Worm are “jail broken” phones, where users disable key Apple security features to get around the terms of usage agreement that they are designed to enforce, analysts said.”

Mainstream reporting of the flaw glosses over the need to install openSSH and repeats the uninformative “key Apple security features” line. Is it just me, or do these ‘analysts’ work for apple, who have a clear interest in enforcing iphone carrier agreements for as long as they can?

‘Make a bigger splash!’, a public art installation by Me (Tim Redfern) and Mark Cullen, is a sound responsive 3d drawing in cold cathode light tubing (neon).

Today we had our first chance to see most of the components of the installation together.

We just received the 2m diameter steel superstructure for the ceiling-mounted piece, which acts as a hanging platform and also accomodates the 35 1-4kv transformers (which pack quite a bit of weight).

Unpacking the components and checking the platform for size we got the first feeling for the actual scale of the piece realised from drawings, exciting!

Next the wiring..