Hide the mouse cursor with X

I recently got myself a touch screen, that I mounted near the entrance to welcome visitors. The device was really hard to install, as the drivers for 4 different Linux distros were broken, and only binary drivers are released. The fifth distro finally worked.

One thing that does annoy me however, is that X always shows the cursor. To hide the cursor on a touch screen, you can use the program unclutter:

yum install unclutter
unclutter -idle 0

Unclutter with such a short delay (0 seconds) also makes it impossible to select texts, but for this application, that's just perfect.

© GeekLabInfo Hide the mouse cursor with X is a post from GeekLab.info. You are free to copy materials from GeekLab.info, but you are required to link back to http://www.geeklab.info

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Backup your phone with zero keypresses

I created some scripts to backup my Samsung Galaxy S2 to my Fedora 16 system without pressing any keys or even touching the mouse. It works like this:

To backup a SGS2, you go to settings > applications > usb tools on the phone, and click the button. You then connect it to a usb cable. At that moment, two removable devices become visible to the Linux system: one for the SD card, one for the built-in memory. But they still contain no media. Only when you press another button on the phone, the "media are inserted in the devices", triggering a "change" action with the udev daemon.

Configuration of the udev daemon

Create a file /etc/udev/rules.d/71-android-backup.rules:

SUBSYSTEM=="block", ACTION=="change", ENV{ID_SERIAL}=="Android_UMS_Composite_XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX-0:0", ENV{DISK_MEDIA_CHANGE}=="1", ENV{ID_FS_TYPE}=="vfat", RUN+="/usr/local/bin/androidbackup"

Whenever a (virtual) medium is inserted, a udev change action is triggered. Actually, it gets triggered multiple times, but we only need the one that has the environment variable DISK_MEDIA_CHANGE=1 set.

Action to perform

The action triggered is /usr/local/bin/androidbackup and all parameters are in the environment. So let's create that file. I use a rsnapshot-like operation to backup my data, but without actually using rsnapshot.

#!/bin/bash
 
function msg {
        /usr/bin/logger -t android "$1"
        DISPLAY=:0 qdbus $dbusRef setLabelText "$1"
        DISPLAY=:0 qdbus $dbusRef Set "" value $2
}
 
if [ "$1" != "FORKED" ]; then
        $0 FORKED &
        exit 0
fi
 
if [ -f /etc/sysconfig/androidbackup ]; then
        . /etc/sysconfig/androidbackup
else
        echo /etc/sysconfig/androidbackup does not exist
        exit 0
fi
 
#debug disabled:
#set > /tmp/android/`date +%s`.$RANDOM
 
dbusRef=`kdialog --display :0 --progressbar "Backup android..." 100`
 
msg "Attach $DEVNAME $ACTION $ID_SERIAL" 0
 
if [ ! -e $DESTINATION ]; then
        # I could mkdir -p, but sometimes $DESTINATION could just be a network location that's offline
        msg "Android will not be backed up: $DESTINATION is not okay" 0
        exit 0
fi
 
mkdir -p /mnt/android
 
mount $DEVNAME /mnt/android 
rc=$?
if [ $rc -ne 0 ]; then
        msg "Problem mounting $DEVNAME to /mnt/android: $rc " 0
        mount | grep android 2>&1 | logger -t androidbackup
        exit 0
fi
 
if [ "`mount |grep -i /mnt/android`" == "" ]; then
        msg "Cannot find /mnt/android in mount table" 0
        exit 0
fi
 
msg "Remove old backup" 8
[ -e $DESTINATION/backup.30 ] && rm -rf $DESTINATION/backup.30
 
msg "Start backup" 10
for i in `/usr/bin/seq 30 -1 2`; do 
        if [ -e $DESTINATION/backup.$((i-1)) ]; then
                msg "mv $DESTINATION/backup.$((i-1)) $DESTINATION/backup.$i" 11
                mv $DESTINATION/backup.$((i-1)) $DESTINATION/backup.$i
        fi
done
 
msg "Copy" 40
[ -e $DESTINATION/backup.0 ] && /bin/cp -al $DESTINATION/backup.0 $DESTINATION/backup.1
mkdir -p $DESTINATION/backup.0/
 
msg "Start rsync" 40
/usr/bin/rsync -az --numeric-ids --delete --hard-links /mnt/android/ $DESTINATION/backup.0/
touch $DESTINATION/backup.0/
 
chown -R $CHOWN $DESTINATION/backup.0
 
umount /mnt/android
 
msg "Done" 100
exit 0

Since that file refers to /etc/sysconfig/androidbackup, let's also make that file:

#next line defines the location of all backups
DESTINATION=/home/geeklab/.androidbackup
 
#next line defines the owner of all files copied
CHOWN=geeklab
© GeekLabInfo Backup your phone with zero keypresses is a post from GeekLab.info. You are free to copy materials from GeekLab.info, but you are required to link back to http://www.geeklab.info

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Use dsacls to gain access to active directory policies

I've locked myself out of group policies a couple of times. When this happens to you, you can gain access again running the following command:

dsacls.exe "CN={GUID},CN=Policies,CN=System,DC=local" /R "Authenticated users"

© GeekLabInfo Use dsacls to gain access to active directory policies is a post from GeekLab.info. You are free to copy materials from GeekLab.info, but you are required to link back to http://www.geeklab.info

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Konsole is driving me crazy!

Konsole, the terminal emulator of KDE, is driving me crazy! Version 4.8 made a slight change, that breaks an essential feature I'm using.

Up to version 4.7.x, I used the command konsole --profile=Profilename to open a terminal. Then I used ctrl+alt+N to open several terminals with the same profile. For some reason, this broke in version 4.8. Since I use this feature like every minute, I'm getting very frustrated by this.

Here comes the beauty of open source: since Konsole is open source, I can fix it myself.

My changes

First, I downloaded the current version of the konsole source RPM and installed it, using rpm -i konsole-4.8.1-1.fc16.src.rpm. In ~/rpmbuild/SOURCES I created a new file named newtab.patch, containing:

--- konsole-4.8.1/src/MainWindow.cpp    2012-02-29 23:56:57.000000000 +0100
+++ konsole-4.8.1/src/MainWindow.cpp    2012-04-03 19:47:52.397594047 +0200
@@ -397,7 +397,8 @@
 
 void MainWindow::newTab()
 {
-    Profile::Ptr defaultProfile = SessionManager::instance()->defaultProfile();
+    Profile::Ptr defaultProfile = MainWindow::defaultProfile();
+              //SessionManager::instance()->defaultProfile();  //Geeklab fix
     emit newSessionRequest(defaultProfile , activeSessionDir() , _viewManager);
 }

Then I editted konsole.spec, adding a line after the one that starts with Patch50:

Patch99: newtab.patch

After that, I added a line after the one that starts with %patch50:

%patch99 -p1 -b .newtab

And we're done. Build the RPM using the command rpmbuild -ba konsole.spec --define "dist geeklab" and install it.

Somehow, this RPM doesn't cover all of the problems, but enough for me to be happy.

© GeekLabInfo Konsole is driving me crazy! is a post from GeekLab.info. You are free to copy materials from GeekLab.info, but you are required to link back to http://www.geeklab.info

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Check your PC after the Nu.nl hack

Yesterday, Dutch news site nu.nl was hacked. Unfortunately, they hardly inform the public of what exactly happened. But this site has a pretty good analysis and a page to check if you are vulnerable.

You can also use MS Safety Scanner to scan your computer, which is a good idea anyway.

I'm happy to say that my clients are all up-to-date and thus not infected.

© GeekLabInfo Check your PC after the Nu.nl hack is a post from GeekLab.info. You are free to copy materials from GeekLab.info, but you are required to link back to http://www.geeklab.info

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How to generate SSH Fingerprint DNS records

ssh-keygen -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key.pub -r hostname
ssh-keygen -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key.pub -r hostname

You can put the output to your dns zone.

Continue Reading…

© GeekLabInfo How to generate SSH Fingerprint DNS records is a post from GeekLab.info. You are free to copy materials from GeekLab.info, but you are required to link back to http://www.geeklab.info

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