Category: coding and admin

iptables firewall for servers

I paid for a new VPS to run tor this week. It is cheaper, and offers a higher bandwidth allowance than my existing tor server so I may yet close that one down – particularly as I recently had trouble with the exit policy on my existing server. In setting up the new server, the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/09/09/iptables-firewall-for-servers/

tails in a spin

When I first tested running a tails mirror on one of my VMs, the traffic level reported by vnstat ran at around 20-30 GiB per day. I figured I could live with that because it meant that my total monthly traffic would be unlikely to exceed my monthly 1TB allowance. However, when I checked the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/01/12/tails-in-a-spin/

tunnelling X over ssh

OK, yes, I know there are probably already a gazillion web pages on the ‘net explaining exactly how to do this, but I got caught out by a silly gotcha when I tried to do this a couple of days ago, so I thought I’d post a note. Firstly, X is not exactly a secure …

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Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/12/19/tunnelling-x-over-ssh/

clarity is not a virtue

Picking up my copy of the second edition I was reminded of the old obfuscated c contests. One of the earliest (anonymous) entries was this tribute to K&R’s famous printf(“hello world\n”); —————————————————————————- int i;main(){for(;i[“]<i;++i){–i;}”];read(‘-‘-‘-‘,i+++”hell\ o, world!\n”,’/’/’/’));}read(j,i,p){write(j/p+p,i—j,i/i);} —————————————————————————- c is not known as flexible for nothing.

Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/10/14/clarity-is-not-a-virtue/

that looks like a scam to me

The volume of spam backscatter I am receiving at the baldric.net domain currently runs at around 18-20,000 emails per month, nearly all of which is aimed at the info@ address I have mentioned before. My mail server is currently configured to reject mail to non-existent users at the SMTP level with a permanent failure message …

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Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/10/10/that-looks-like-a-scam-to-me/

squeezing the slugs

Debian 6 (squeeze) has been the current stable version since February 2011. The latest version (6.02) was released in late June. I have put off updating my slugs from lenny (old stable) for a while because I wanted to see how others faired before committing myself. Indeed, initial reports on the debian arm list indicated …

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Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/09/26/squeezing-the-slugs/

no police here

screenshot of www.police.uk website

The UK Home Office launched a new crime statistics website today at www.police.uk. The site is supposed to show “Local crime and policing information for England and Wales”. I’m not entirely convinced of the merit of the site in the first place (and can see all sorts of potential objections arising in some of the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/02/01/no-police-here/