I have had a very nice night last night, I was with a friend so we went and bought vodka, beer, juice and bit of this bit of that :D. I finally went to bed at 00:30 AM but the weirdest thing happened this morning, I felt the bed moving WTH lol, so I got up looked around and I finally found out why !! A cat came through the window crawled under the bed and got himself stuck between the bed and the wall trying to climb there lol, Just look how cute he is. The problem was I wasn’t sure if I’m still dreaming or not lol …

Have you ever dreamed a Sabayon that fits on your small hard drive, a Sabayon that is smart, lightweight and ready to be filled in with the applications YOU want? On a 700MB CD also? Here it is my friend! It’s called “Pod” and it’s just like a Mini Edition, but with XFCE 4.4.2 in it and based on Sabayon Linux 3.5.

Distribution updates since Sabayon Linux 3.5
• Entropy 0.15.24.1 featuring some bug fixes and the Spritz/Notification Applet split
• Sabayon Linux Installer fixes:
  - updated dmraid library
  - misc. bug fixes
• Note: if you want to use Portage instead of Entropy, you have to download one of the two files below, depending on your chosen architecture:
  - Sabayon Pod x86 3.5 Portage db
  - Sabayon Pod x86-64 3.5 Portage db
  and unpack them to /var/db/pkg

Resources for Sabayon Pod 3.5:

PLEASE - GIVE BACK A DONATION TO US
- PayPal Donation Page
##### If you would like to support our Project, please consider to download or purchase a DVD from here:
- The Linux Store recommended
- On-Disk.com

Download Mirrors:

• Official Mirrors Page

  Misc:

• Sabayon Pod x86 3.5 Linux kernel configuration
• Sabayon Pod x86-64 3.5 Linux kernel configuration
• Sabayon Pod x86 3.5 Package list
• Sabayon Pod x86-64 3.5 Package list
• Extra documentation

Important Notes:
• This distribution contains libdvdcss look here if you live in the U.S. !.
• Trademarks are property of their respective owners, everywhere.

On behalf of Sabayon’s development team, we would like to thank you for your patience and your support and please don’t forget to support us back.

Source: Sabayon’s forum.

Security is the most important thing in our lives, to this end, a lot of tools and algorithms has been created, tools allowing you to encrypt your data. In this article I will provide details on the 2 most commonly used tools/algorithm for data protection, GnuPG and LUKS.

In this article, I will teach you how to use both tools in a different situations, exploring many useful situations… Once you’re done, you will be able to protect and keep your data safe and secured…

Index
Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: GnuPG Tutorial
Page 3: Luks Tutorial

It’s very important, when you are choosing an important password, to choose it well, always mix letters ( lower AND upper ), numbers and characters… A week password can be guessed via dictionary attack, like `home` or `computer` etc… A strong password can never be guessed via dictionary attack, ex: `]RmXpEB=1&` or `rl*~V3nM"S` …

I agree that random passwords are very hard to remember, but it’s better safe than sorry right ? Anyway you might think I thought of that password, well guess again

To generate a random, yet powerful, password I use apg it’s a small program that generates passwords, you can request both pronounceable and random passwords.. here some examples:
Generate an 8 to 10 chars long, pronounceable passwords
$ apg -a 0 -m 8 -x 10
Dabfiecaf
cebfaysHey
hivjebDoj
Kaneisht2
FiwauHyk
NiwryinkEp


Generate 15, 5 to 10 chars long, random passwords
$ apg -a 1 -m 5 -x 10 -n 15
y=/y}Ue
U^hV;DX
Y|'q@PWU}
Iz?J[M\{:
z0)g(3?bR[
W3'(PQ}8.
/]eb:]VkU
num)bQ
|q&Z6:)d5
I()jhl?I
0′[Pc1″<4
e1,`L”
WAU\ %o+n1+ 9pIs'


Password Strength
To check the strengh of your password, you can use Password checker by Microsoft.com or this small Java program

Good Luck

We are proud to announce the release of Sabayon 3.5 Final

codename: Ibex Poacher

Distribution Features, Updates, Changes since 3.4

Entropy 0.15.23.7: defining the “software2.0″ concept (read our current/future development plan and status, sponsored by the NLnet Foundation)
- This is the Cool, Exclusive, Fast, User-oriented, Sabayon Linux Package Manager, Portage compatible, written from scratch
- Featuring “equo” as Textual front-end
- Featuring “Spritz” as Graphical front-end (based on YumEx)
- Featuring a notification applet front-end to keep your system up-to-date (based on RHN-Applet)
- Featuring an Online Packages Browser at packages.sabayonlinux.org
- Featuring “Community Repositories” support, every user will be able to create his/her own repository in less than 15 minutes
- Featuring Gentoo Linux Security Advisories support, enabling you to easily and quickly get informed about security threats and their fixes/package updates
- Completely internationalized into your language (5 languages currently supported), help us!
- Around 7500 applications available for both 32 and 64bit Computers
- Multiple branches support, wanna stick with 3.5 during the 4.0 development? No problem!
- Currently at about 40000 lines of code, and growing
- No more headaches to keep your System updated, We do it for You! Two clicks or a few keystrokes, this is what you just need.
- Completely based on Open Source technologies (Python, SQLite, MySQL, OpenSSL, Urwid, gzip), source code available at svn.sabayonlinux.org
- One of the first Gentoo-based Linux distribution actively supporting source and binary packages.

Known issues:
• Ath5k wireless driver doesn’t support EeePC yet, please use ndiswrapper.

Resources for Sabayon Linux 3.5 Stable:

PLEASE - GIVE BACK A DONATION TO US
- PayPal Donation Page
##### If you would like to support our Project, please consider to download or purchase a DVD from here:
- The Linux Store recommended
- On-Disk.com

http://thepiratebay.org/tor/4270605 : x86
http://www.mininova.org/tor/1556259 : x86
http://thepiratebay.org/tor/4270607 : x86_64
http://www.mininova.org/tor/1556264 : x86_64

ISO - Torrents (Preferred way):

• SabayonLinux x86 3.5 torrent file
• SabayonLinux x86-64 3.5 torrent file
• SabayonLinux x86 3.5 Torrent (thepiratebay.org)
• SabayonLinux x86-64 3.5 Torrent download (thepiratebay.org)
• SabayonLinux x86 3.5 Torrent (mininova.org)
• SabayonLinux x86-64 3.5 Torrent download (mininova.org)
• SabayonLinux x86 3.5 Torrent (linuxtracker.org)
• SabayonLinux x86-64 3.5 Torrent download (inuxtracker.org)
  Download Mirrors:
• Official Mirrors Page

  Misc:

• Sabayon Linux x86 3.5 md5 hash
• Sabayon Linux x86_64 3.5 md5 hash
• Sabayon Linux x86 3.5 Linux kernel configuration
• Sabayon Linux x86-64 3.5 Linux kernel configuration
• SabayonLinux x86 3.5 Package list
• SabayonLinux x86-64 3.5 Package list
• Extra documentation

Important Notes:
• This distribution contains libdvdcss look here if you live in the U.S. !.
• This distribution contains proprietary and non-GPL softwares too (like from NVIDIA, ATI, Google, etc). Before running them, be sure to read their license and agree with that, otherwise, just remove those applications. To run SabayonLinux without Proprietary drivers, just use “noproprietary” boot flag.
• When you exit Sauerbraten or Nexuiz your Computer will shut down automatically.
• Trademarks are property of their respective owners, everywhere.

Closing:
On behalf of Sabayon’s development team, we would like to thank you for your patience and your support and please don’t forget to support us back.

Source: Original post on Sabayon Linux Forums.

]]> http://wael.nasreddine.com/2008/07/02/sabayon-35-final.html/feed http://wael.nasreddine.com/2008/07/01/command-line-are-you-afraid.html http://wael.nasreddine.com/2008/07/01/command-line-are-you-afraid.html#comments Tue, 01 Jul 2008 06:44:00 +0000 Wael Nasreddine http://wael.nasreddine.com/?p=118 Most people I know, whom aren’t very used to linux yet, are afraid of the command line, they think it’s hard to learn and somehow useless but that is entirely false… The command line is very easy to learn, well at least the basics of it, but you should know that the shell is much [...]]]>

Most people I know, whom aren’t very used to linux yet, are afraid of the command line, they think it’s hard to learn and somehow useless but that is entirely false… The command line is very easy to learn, well at least the basics of it, but you should know that the shell is much more powerful than anything you have, or will, ever use…

In this small article I will try to show you all the basics on the command line, but first things first, let’s start with the directory layout:

• /bin: Contains binaries that are needed for the boot process or for working in single mode, this folder should always be within the root partition!
• /boot: Contains boot information, usually it’s where grub/lilo and kernel files ends up.
• /dev: Contains device nodes, like /dev/console, /dev/sda /dev/hda etc… It used to be populated by devfs but now udev take care of it, you will find many articles on both devfs/udev on Google
• /etc: Contains system-wide configuration files and login information.
• /home: Contains the home folders for all non-root users
• /lib: Contains libraries needed for booting and single mode, just like /bin but it also includes kernel modules, This must reside in root as well.
• /media: Contains folders where removable devices will be mounted, like USB flash key
• /mnt: Contains any misc partition you might have, and CD/DVD drives too
• /opt: Contains anything that doesn’t fit inside /usr, basically any binary released software or Non-GPL licensed software… Be Aware that a lot of distribution choose this folder for different purposes, like installing Gnome/KDE inside, IMHO it’s not good but I respect their decision.
• /proc: Contains information on all running process, and some misc files like /proc/cpuinfo which is a detailed information on the processor.
• /root: is the home directory for the user root.
• /sbin: Just like /bin but only binaries that can’t be used unless you are root.
• /sys: Contains information on the system and all the attached devices on all ports (USB, IDE, Parallel Port… etc.. ) populated by the kernel.
• /tmp: Contains temporary files, you want to download/check something just throw it here, it’ll be deleted then next time you boot. NOTE: this is false for some distributions, please check the distribution to see if it does clean it up on boot.
• /usr: Contains binaries, libraries and include files for all the installed applications.
• /var: Contains databases and data files.
]]> http://wael.nasreddine.com/2008/07/01/command-line-are-you-afraid.html/feed http://wael.nasreddine.com/2008/06/29/june-29th-screenshots.html http://wael.nasreddine.com/2008/06/29/june-29th-screenshots.html#comments Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:17:54 +0000 Wael Nasreddine http://wael.nasreddine.com/?p=109 Sabayon linux, Gnome 2.22 and Compiz 0.7.6 ]]>

Sabayon linux, Gnome 2.22 and Compiz 0.7.6


]]> http://wael.nasreddine.com/2008/06/29/june-29th-screenshots.html/feed http://wael.nasreddine.com/2008/06/24/new-look-feel.html http://wael.nasreddine.com/2008/06/24/new-look-feel.html#comments Tue, 24 Jun 2008 09:26:07 +0000 Wael Nasreddine http://wael.nasreddine.com/?p=103 Hello, I changed the theme of my blog today, the theme is simple but beautiful and powerful… The theme is made by Tom, Kudos dude Anyway there’s still some things that needs fixing, for example, the comments aren’t showing in the static pages, as for the posts, the comments are always bold, but it will [...]]]>

Hello,

I changed the theme of my blog today, the theme is simple but beautiful and powerful… The theme is made by Tom, Kudos dude

Anyway there’s still some things that needs fixing, for example, the comments aren’t showing in the static pages, as for the posts, the comments are always bold, but it will be fixed soon! Sorry for any inconvenience…

Oh and here’s a little vote for you
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Stay tuned!

EDIT: Commenting inside posts are back, pages are still having a problem…

]]> http://wael.nasreddine.com/2008/06/24/new-look-feel.html/feed http://wael.nasreddine.com/2008/06/21/sabayon-linux.html http://wael.nasreddine.com/2008/06/21/sabayon-linux.html#comments Sat, 21 Jun 2008 04:50:30 +0000 Wael Nasreddine http://wael.nasreddine.com/?p=102 I always love Linux, I actually never use windows, but I still have to choose a distribution, I always loved Gentoo because it’s very easy to use, besides it’s a source based… And I truly love the USE flags, You can build the packages the way you like I mean no offense to Gentoo [...]]]>

I always love Linux, I actually never use windows, but I still have to choose a distribution, I always loved Gentoo because it’s very easy to use, besides it’s a source based… And I truly love the USE flags, You can build the packages the way you like

I mean no offense to Gentoo whatsoever actually I thank them over and over again, but since Gentoo’s developers are always very busy, Gentoo’s default configuration is very ugly and a lot of packages are outdated, so I went looking for a distribution forked/based on Gentoo and I found it

Sabayon is a very nice and beautiful distribution, in fact just booting the liveDVD will give you a very good feeling, the graphics are very nice, the music playing on startup ( original eh? ) is very nice too… Here’s some screenshots… So I decided to join the developers team and here I am helping as far as I can… I just love every aspect about Sabayon and if you’re reading this then do me a favor, download the ISO and try it.



]]> http://wael.nasreddine.com/2008/06/21/sabayon-linux.html/feed http://wael.nasreddine.com/2008/05/28/may-28th-screenshots.html http://wael.nasreddine.com/2008/05/28/may-28th-screenshots.html#comments Wed, 28 May 2008 08:30:29 +0000 Wael Nasreddine http://wael.nasreddine.com/?p=78 Here’s my desktop, running Ubuntu 8.04, Gnome 2.22.2 and compiz-fusion… Wallpaper: 1280×800 ]]>

Here’s my desktop, running Ubuntu 8.04, Gnome 2.22.2 and compiz-fusion…

Wallpaper: 1280×800

]]> http://wael.nasreddine.com/2008/05/28/may-28th-screenshots.html/feed http://wael.nasreddine.com/2008/05/13/vote-for-chirine.html http://wael.nasreddine.com/2008/05/13/vote-for-chirine.html#comments Tue, 13 May 2008 19:39:34 +0000 Wael Nasreddine http://wael.nasreddine.com/?p=68 Howdy! Chirine Tamim is running for Miss USJ 2008 and she needs your support, I appreciate if you’d vote for her here, There’s also a group dedicated to this event, please join it. Thank you. ]]>

Howdy!

Chirine Tamim is running for Miss USJ 2008 and she needs your support, I appreciate if you’d vote for her here, There’s also a group dedicated to this event, please join it.

Thank you.


]]> http://wael.nasreddine.com/2008/05/13/vote-for-chirine.html/feed http://wael.nasreddine.com/2008/04/08/the-perfect-im-messenger.html http://wael.nasreddine.com/2008/04/08/the-perfect-im-messenger.html#comments Tue, 08 Apr 2008 14:57:52 +0000 Wael Nasreddine http://wael.nasreddine.com/?p=66 Lately I have been getting sick and tired of graphical IM, I like aMSN for MSN clients but wait I have 3 MSN accounts, that’s 3 wish’s processes and believe me, that’s too much !! I tried using Pidgin, but I didn’t like it compared to aMSN, If I want to use a graphical messenger [...]]]>

Lately I have been getting sick and tired of graphical IM, I like aMSN for MSN clients but wait I have 3 MSN accounts, that’s 3 wish’s processes and believe me, that’s too much !! I tried using Pidgin, but I didn’t like it compared to aMSN, If I want to use a graphical messenger I’d like it to be fully featured… I have decided to go to a much more appealing solution, a textual one, but hey I already use mutt for my mail, and ViM for everything I write, So I don’t mind a textual messenger…

As you already know, I have my own server, always running, so I figured why not having the IM client on my server, this way I’ll always be online, anyone can leave me messages, So I have installed Bitlbee which is an IRC server that does the communications between your IRC client and the IM servers, it supports AIM, Google Talk, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo etc…

So now I use Irssi + Bitblee on GNU Screen to chat with 3 MSN, 1 Yahoo and 1 Google Talk account, and beleive me it changes the way you used to chat, well first you won’t have many useless open windows all over your desktop, all your chats will be in the &bitlbee channel on your Irssi, It’s perfect…. but wait a second…. how would I know if someone talks to me ?? since it’s on the server, not on the PC I use, there must be a solution on how to get notifications when someone talks to me right ?? well there is a very good one… ( One that works with a simple Irssi, anyone who talks to me over any channel or in private I’ll be notified… ) …

The idea is to make Irssi write everything addressed to you ( highlighted or via PM ) to an external file,then on the other computer you’ll ssh to the server, read the file line by line and use notify-send to send notifications, here’s a small tutorial on how to do it, I’ll explain both server and client side…

• Server side:
  First download the fnotify.pl perl script (kudos to Thorsten Leemhuis), and put it in your ~/.irssi/scripts folder then make sure it’s auto loaded ( cd ~/.irssi/scripts; ln -s ../fnotify.pl fnotify.pl ), this script will write everything addressed to you in the ~/.irssi/fnotify file, it doesn’t matter if you are marked away or not, which is the desired behavior…
• Client side:
  Download the IrssiNotify bash script, and put it somewhere in your $PATH, make sure you edit it, you need to customize it with the address if the server you would like to connect to, then launch it, if you’d like to launch it automatically when you launch gnome, just put this IrssiNotify.desktop in your ~/.config/autostart folder…
  But hold on, there’s still one issue, if you are online and chatting on Irssi, you will still receive messages from IrssiNotify, I mean that was the whole point of it, to receive notifications whether you are online or away, but I gotta admit, this is annoying… The solution was simple, if ~/.disableIrssiNotify exists, then the IrssiNotify script will simply discard any notification instead of sending it through notify-send… so a simple keybinding was in place, I assigned
  <Ctrl><Shift>d to:

  touch ~/.disableIrssiNotify; notify-send -i gtk-dialog-info -t 10000 -- "IrssiNotify Disabled" "IrrsiNotify has been disabled, to enable it please use <Ctrl><Shift>e"

  and
  <Ctrl><Shift>e to:

  rm -f ~/.disableIrssiNotify; notify-send -i gtk-dialog-info -t 10000 -- "IrssiNotify Enabled" "IrrsiNotify has been enabled, to disable it please use <Ctrl><Shift>d"

  Sorry but I won’t cover keybinding setup thoroughly , you just need to edit /apps/metacity/global_keybindings and /apps/metacity/keybinding_commands using gconf-editor, google a bit you will find a lot of tutorials on this subject

I finally have a consistent, lightweight IM messenger, that I can use from any computer via SSH, there’s a lot of benefits, the most important for me are the logs, and the simplicity…. I LOVE IT

P.S: The notification method is not limited to SSH, you could easly modify the IrssiNotify bash script to read the ~/.irssi/fnotify file on your machine, it shouldn’t be that hard

]]> http://wael.nasreddine.com/2008/04/08/the-perfect-im-messenger.html/feed http://wael.nasreddine.com/2008/04/01/aria2-firefox-3.html http://wael.nasreddine.com/2008/04/01/aria2-firefox-3.html#comments Tue, 01 Apr 2008 13:43:17 +0000 Wael Nasreddine http://wael.nasreddine.com/?p=65 Hello, Do you like the famous wget? but you would like to have a more advanced program? Open your arms and welcome the aria2 software, I have been using it for more than a year now and I thought it deserve an article on my blog, specially the integration with firefox 3, we’ll discuss it later [...]]]>

Hello,

Do you like the famous wget? but you would like to have a more advanced program? Open your arms and welcome the aria2 software, I have been using it for more than a year now and I thought it deserve an article on my blog, specially the integration with firefox 3, we’ll discuss it later in this article…

Aria2 is a very good command line download manager it supports ordinary links, metalink and torrents as well, very fast and doesn’t use a lot of resources, it also supports up to 5 connection per mirror ( if you specify for example 10 mirrors for the same file and 5 connection to each one, you’ll get 50 simultaneous connections… ) and most importantly it supports reading cookies from firefox’s cookies file, the problem is that it doesn’t read cookies.sqlite ( the one used with firefox 3) but cookies.txt ( used in firefox 1 and firefox 2 ), in this article I will provide a workaround on how to use the cookies.sqlite file untill aria2’s developers come up with a better solution…

I used an alias for aira2c that loads the firefox cookies file automatically

alias aria2c="aria2c --load-cookies='${HOME}/.mozilla/firefox/eMxyzptlk/cookies.txt'"

But this does not work with firefox 3, I had to make a script called dumpcookies based on a small implementation that I have found here. The new alias would be something like this:

alias aria2c="dumpcookies -i '${HOME}/.mozilla/firefox/eMxyzptlk/cookies.sqlite' -o '/tmp/cookies.txt' &> /dev/null; chmod 600 '/tmp/cookies.txt' &> /dev/null; aria2c --load-cookies='/tmp/cookies.txt'"

This alias will make aria2c convert firefox’s cookies to a text file on each call and writes it to /tmp ( it also makes it readable only by your user so you’ll remain safe.. ), and call aria2c with the converted cookies… It doesn’t delete it though!!

The aria2 documentation and man page are also a good reading…

P.S: here’s the complete alias I use, it is optimum:
alias aria2c="dumpcookies -i '${HOME}/.mozilla/firefox/eMxyzptlk/cookies.sqlite' -o '/tmp/cookies.txt' &> /dev/null; chmod 600 '/tmp/cookies.txt' &> /dev/null; aria2c --file-allocation=none --load-cookies='/tmp/cookies.txt' -c"
P.P.S: here’s my alias file in case you don’t want to copy/paste….

]]> http://wael.nasreddine.com/2008/04/01/aria2-firefox-3.html/feed http://wael.nasreddine.com/2008/03/31/spike-just-paid-me-a-visit.html http://wael.nasreddine.com/2008/03/31/spike-just-paid-me-a-visit.html#comments Sun, 30 Mar 2008 23:34:48 +0000 Wael Nasreddine http://wael.nasreddine.com/?p=50 Good evening… I was sleeping 10 minutes ago, and I woke up because something was touching me, and voila, my cat paid me a visit after he has disappeared for 8 months Yuuupi… and guess what? For all this time outside, he has not changed, he always stays beside the window, and whatever I do, [...]]]>

Good evening…

I was sleeping 10 minutes ago, and I woke up because something was touching me, and voila, my cat paid me a visit after he has disappeared for 8 months Yuuupi… and guess what? For all this time outside, he has not changed, he always stays beside the window, and whatever I do, he wants and insists on going outside LOL, look at the pictures below, he’s always staring outside!! crazy lol… You have no idea how hard it was to take those pictures, Spike refuses to turn his sight away from the window, he’s just crazy!!! but I love him

Right after I took the pictures I opened the window and he’s gone, I hope he comes back more often, I’m not even sure what he’s eating, he never eats here!! weird!!!



]]> http://wael.nasreddine.com/2008/03/31/spike-just-paid-me-a-visit.html/feed http://wael.nasreddine.com/2008/03/30/gimme-wallpaper.html http://wael.nasreddine.com/2008/03/30/gimme-wallpaper.html#comments Sun, 30 Mar 2008 16:47:39 +0000 Wael Nasreddine http://wael.nasreddine.com/linux/desktop/43 Gimme Wallpaper, or Gwall, is a small script to randomize and rotate your wallpapers, it is very fast and very clean ( as it is only a bash script ), I use it everyday now since it is so boring to have one single wallpaper all day long… To install it, just download the installer script [...]]]>

Gimme Wallpaper, or Gwall, is a small script to randomize and rotate your wallpapers, it is very fast and very clean ( as it is only a bash script ), I use it everyday now since it is so boring to have one single wallpaper all day long…

To install it, just download the installer script and run it (as your user not as root !!!), it will get all the requirement you need for Gwall…

To install the script follow this really simple instructions

$ wget -O GwallInstaller 'http://wael.nasreddine.com/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/wael/trunk/src/installers/GwallInstaller?view=co'
$ chmod +x GwallInstaller
$ ./GwallInstaller

And follow the instructions in the installer filer

Have a nice day

]]> http://wael.nasreddine.com/2008/03/30/gimme-wallpaper.html/feed