James'Techblog

With Linux Mint 19.1 coming in November, I decided to switch from arch-based as it was getting kind of buggy, I chose Linux Mint 19 and 18.3 for my drives, mostly because older computers wouldn’t work as well graphically with the new xorg stack in 19. The newer computer, however, works fine. It uses the modesetting driver in place of the standard intel driver that the cpu calls for. This seems to weed out any issues and the performance is at least on par with the brand name version of the driver module. Linux Mint all-in-all works better and smoother with regards to default themes and with optimizing itself for SSD drives. It also has a lot of things that I’m used to with regards to the traditional layout of the desktop, the standard Ubuntu base for packages, and the way that rather than resorting to a terminal every single time I want something done, I can find a graphical component for most things. My one gripe with Linux Mint is that in a short while, many of t...

The Vivaldi browser, a browser built off of HTML, CSS, and backed by the Blink engine most notably found in Google-Chrome, is a bit of fresh air within the browser world. The newest snapshots are no exception. Vivaldi recently jumped their snapshot release to version number 2.0.xx and since have been making a long list of improvements. All of three snapshots in as many weeks seems to be making great strides at ironing out the final little bugs. No one is certain exactly what date the new and improved Vivaldi milestone will be released, however, it is speculated that they are on the home stretch now. Vivaldi recently fixed some mac media issues and other regressions and crashes in their browser, the new Milestone looks as though it will have the Sync feature officially added this time around. They are also making tremendous strides in their web mail client and as of late, I can say that it seems to work really well. Vivaldi has also added some useful toggles within the settin...

Puppy Linux is a distribution that few people really try out. Little is really known about the distribution and the ones who benefit most from it are the ones who never want to get their hands dirty fixing some bug(or even seeing bugs at all really). Puppy was pieced together file by file and is thus related strictly to no other distribution, but rather takes from all of them. It is based on GNULinux and follows the GNU licensing. Puppy runs on a limited portion of RAM which is negligible by today’s standards. Puppy boots to around 100 MB or less but it is recommended to have about 128 or better MB of memory in the machine. Puppy has versions built for ARM devices as well. The distribution was built to breathe life in older hardware and show users off a whole new set of modern software despite not necessarily having to be ran from a hard drive, in fact, the distribution can run on systems where the hard drive is dead or not present at all. To boot to the system, ...

Firefox 63 marks a big turning point for Firefox, not only will it see a new Content blocking feature implemented which will automatically allow users to block all kinds of tracking scripts and cookies(even slow ones) which will improve performance as well as security, but they are also working on a potential option to help secure users’ DNS traffic within the browser as well. This will use DoH or DNS over Https which will encrypt DNS data. The feature is in Nightly versions now and is not enabled by default, but users who wish to try it out can do so. Also, as with Google Chrome Canary, the browser is also trying to eliminate its future use of Symantec certificates. In the past, malicious apps and sites have used signed certificates from trusted websites such as Verisign and even Symantec. The Symantec certs will no longer be valid in Firefox and Chrome after the nightly/Canary versions become stable. Meanwhile, the browser is also undergoing minor UI and backend change...

A week ago, it was revealed that Ubuntu and its derivatives would be releasing patches to the Linux kernel to try and prevent a critical flaw with the L1TF or a flaw directly affecting memory cache found in L1 of an intel cpu core which was exposed to malicious code running in the background which would steal personal information and reveal it to attackers. This was patched previously, however, Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu didn’t actually fix everything. There was an apology released by Canonical for in fact mucking some things up with their previous patch. It was revealed that there would be another patch to the kernel which came through about a week or so ago, however, this didn’t fix everything either. Intel Microcode is CPU instruction code which is updated by the CPU vendor to add security patches and new instructions to the CPU. Intel aren’t as forthcoming as some might like for them to be about their company’s updates to their CPU firmware. Intel has in th...

Debian, the operating system that really started it all, is now turning 25. To kick off this feat, many are celebrating by explaining things about the history of the project, such as this article from Itsfoss: here. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems that is still being developed. It is the forefather of many offshoots such as Ubuntu which is closely tied to its stable branch with emphasis on security updates and newer software packages. Ubuntu takes a modest, yet modern approach with comparison to Debian’s more cautious approach with chooses stability over anything else. It is also a grandparent to Linux Mint, the second most popular distribution in the Linux world for modern desktops and laptops. Linux Mint again allows users a choice, but prefers stability and usability over anything else, however, it does add features that are not in neither in Ubuntu or Debian. Debian was around before the advent of AOL and the internet, with that age, it has progressed...

In the spirit of the bash scripting tutorials I am working on, this is one tool that can be quite useful when automating certain tasks. Systemd utilizes files in detail describing each unit. These unit files give the name and path of the unit to be ran and act more like .desktop files in way of their format. Systemd can not run a unit without a file such as this. Systemd timers follow the system clock to perform an action. To list timers on a system, running the command systemctl list-timers (--all) will respectively display each timer active on a system with the all flag showing inactive ones too. To create your own timers/services you can use the following format: [UNIT] Description=”Aptly names or describes what the unit/script will do” CONFLICTS=”Makes sure the timer stops when the service starts” [SERVICE] Type=”Simple usually works for a service unless you just want it to run once then oneshot works” ExecStart= path to file or service to be ran ...

While loops or Do While loops are loops that, based on a condition, will loop through a list of data. While loops are good for listing several names at once or continually running an application through a loop to gather complete user input and data in order to store that information in variables for later use. While loops are common in Bash, Python and all kinds of programming languages, and unlike Until loops, they can run indefinitely. While loops are discernible from For loops in how they operate, however, sometimes scenarios can be skewed where both might seem to fill a need. It can often be confusing at times for beginners to programming. However, While loops are more flexible and can handle boolean values really well. A couple of examples of while loops are as follows: while TRUE do command FALSE done n=0 while [ $n -lt 7 ]; do command n=$n+1 sleep 1 done while [ $? -eq 0 ]; do command1 command2 command3 break done As you can...

Apparently, the newer Linux kernel is now including an NSA encryption tool. The find was recently covered by itsfoss and others. Needless to say, if you’re a Linux user, you’re probably not alone to be unhappy with this move. Someone from Google reworked the code for the tool and placed it inside the Kernel. No one knows for sure if this will last, no one knows if this was intended by Linus Torvalds, but so far, he has yet to comment one way or the other. The module isn’t enabled by default in Ubuntu, however, it does appear to be enabled in Arch-based systems (This is kind of strange as Arch users are the ones making the biggest protest). The reason this is considered such a big deal is not that it has anything to do with opening a door for NSA people to spy on Linux users, this is a big deal because it is the idea of taking untrusted third-party code from someone outside the Linux community and placing it into the Linux kernel, an open source piece of software, without ask...

I generally steer clear of this platform as a rule. I neither use, nor cover news about Microsoft heavy topics these days. I am mostly a Linux person, however, when dealing with technology, it’s hard to miss such a big elephant in the room. From phones, to tablets, to desktop pc’s, Microsoft has a big hand in deep pockets. Last year, Germany’s leading officials had planned, with very little foresight, to launch a campaign in which they would all scrap Microsoft Windows for Linux and other open source software. This did not go so well as the local tech experts had trouble understanding and or maintenancing Linux machines. Due to a lack of research, appropriate tech personnel, use of aging hardware and a number of other incorporating factors, Germany decided to ditch Linux to revert back to Windows, but in doing so, they costed taxpayers Millions and opted for newer and better machines in the process. It boggles the mind how many people still rely on this dated and increasingl...

According to an article from thehackernews, Whatsapp, the commonly used mobile messaging app which allows users to use wifi to send messages, was found vulnerable to attack via the end-to-end encryption method that Whatsapp uses to encrypt messages. This hole could be used to spread what researchers are calling “fake news”. “Fake news” is any considered misinformation from any credible or noncredible source that at least pretends to be the news. To call something fake news, however, can often be biased as one person’s fake news is another person’s gullable truth. Either way, the idea is that the messages can be altered based on this vulnerability and even the sender can be changed. Regardless of what is considered to be misinformation here, Whatsapp’s own solution is to limit the amount of users a sender can forward a message to. There is an old game where a group of children stand in a row and one child starts telling a secret and it gets passed down via word-of-mout...

Recently, I embarked on a journey to try and see if it was possible to change the current dns settings via terminal for arch-based systems using NetworkManager service. There were some challenges with this. Many of my attempts kept getting overwritten at boot. One of the reasons is that unlike other network services, NetworkManager has its own way of handling dns settings. The etc resolv.conf file should be changeable by creating a .head file for it, but that doesn’t seem to work with Network Manager’s current settings. To make that work, you have to add two files to NetworkManager’s conf.d directory. That didn’t fly with me, so I opted to install wicd. Wicd is an alternate, albeit faster seeming Network management replacement that really feels lighter to work with. Wicd is often used for its better compatibility with wireless connectivity. That’s why I’m considering adding it to the scripts and making a small dns changer function for it as well. To do this, I’ll have to alter th...

If statements are a low level form of conditional statements like case and or while which add on to either really well and allow the user or programmer to set up a project which can take user input and or true/false statements and provide a service until something is no longer valid or until all options have been established. If statements are a simple way to decide between two options and automatically pick the best option for the end-user. This makes coding much easier and takes fewer lines than case statements. For loops often utilise these statements as well. If statements are closer to the fourth or fifth thing you will have to practice with in a programming class and they are super easy to learn and understand. If statements are renown because they can be used in almost every language in some form or another. An example of an if statement that tests a true/false scenario would be: if [[ $? -eq 0 ]]; then do something else do something else fi ...

User prompting can be done in at least a couple of different ways in bash. User prompting is useful when you are drafting a project or an important scripting job for someone else to use to successfully complete a task. When collecting user input, the input is placed in a variable(see last article) and then the value of the variable is implied when the variable is called later in the script. Multiple variables can be specified in the read line, this will allow for more than one answer to the script’s question. Some examples of situations where this would be useful would be when your client needs to sort and review large text files or spreadsheets by the information in the files. Linux has commands for sifting through and sorting data, but to appy it in a script, the script has to know what files to look through and what to do with said information. Another useful example is when creating a simple bash cli game to pass time at work when you should really be doing something bu...

When installing a snap package in Linux, Ubuntu users have snapd, a snap daemon, already installed into their system. This means that as of 18.04.x you can now install snap packages as sudo snap packagename. Snaps make it easy to install a package with all of its current and up-to-date dependencies. Snaps run in containerised sandboxes so security is a priority and malware packages can’t actively change the system without user approval. Previously, a Linux user was tortured by broken packages or unmet dependencies. This is quickly becoming a thing of the past. With so much support for the new package management system, users of all distros and desktop environments can take part in having the latest and greatest software at their disposal. Even Windows is getting interested in this marvel of the modern age of computing. Manjaro and Arch users may not yet automatically have snapd installed, to ensure that it is installed on your system using pacman, type sudo pacman -S...

When writing scripts, it is often important to use and declare variables. Declaring variables is super easy. There are multiple ways to declare them, but they each work the same way. One way that I often employ is to prompt users for their input, place said input in a variable, and then use the variable to tell the script what the user wants. By this method, I am using the variable as a wrapper for something else. Variables are great for projects in coding where you really don’t know what the output of the variable will be, but you know what you want the variable to do. Other commands can be used as value for variables and declaring a word or a number as a variable and giving it value allows the echo command to print that value to the screen when typing echo $variable. A good example of declaring and calling a variable would be opening a terminal and typing var1=$(cat filename | grep “RandomPattern”) then typing echo $var1. Typing echo with the variable name will result in ...

I spoke last year about a Ccleaner vulnerability that allowed a backdoor into a user’s system. By the time all the news had been fully broken, a new version had been released to patch any inconvenient holes in the software, further reassuring user security. That alone gave Ccleaner a bad image, however, it didn’t stop there. Version 5.45 appears to also be causing concern for its users by way of data collection with no clear opt-out. What’s more, in the past you were able to shut off monitoring, however it seems that that is no longer applicable. I also mentioned some alternatives that I often use, These included Bleachbit and Glary Utilities. I have tried others, but I recommend these. Ccleaner was acquired by Avast back as of version 5.33. Avast used to be my antivirus vendor of choice, yet as of late, my favor for them has waned. Avast Antivirus now includes similar data collection and while you can turn it off, it seems morally questionable at best. Piriform and Avast should ...

When performing command line tasks or (CLI) jobs in Linux, it can become tedious when there is a lot to do, for instance, working as an administrator for a small/medium/large company. Automation is very helpful when parsing large files or running multiple commands at once more than one time a day. Scripts are basically text documents that run a series of commands in succession of one another. Think of it as writing for a play. Scripts use the #! sign at the top, this is known as a shabang. The shabang alerts Bash that the following text document is a script and should be ran as a succession of lines as such. The environment comes after the shabang like so: #!/bin/env/ replacing env with the environment the script is to be read from. Most Bash ran scripts have the environment of shell. Python and Ruby use their own environments respectively. Bash and Shell are not the same things. Bash or Bourne Again Shell handles lots of commands very differently to regular shell. Sh...

A new spectre flaw dubbed NetSpectre has been found. This nasty flaw works in the same way that regular Spectre works by going through cached resources in the CPU and reading important user data. This flaw, however, doesn’t require physical access to your device. NetSpectre leverages the CPU’s natural architecture to execute possible remote code against an unpatched microcode or set of instructions built into the chip. Many operating systems including Windows and Linux have attempted to correct much of this malicious code execution by altering the way their kernels access RAM and CPU. After this you can probably expect even more changes. This is not to be confused with Meltdown which uses the same technique to gain access to the entire system. Spectre itself can only access Kernel memory. Google Chrome and many other apps that use passwords and other login data, have patched their applications already. Many of these patches included altering the timing of the application. M...

Due to a recent event occuring on Github, I had to change my password and add 2-step authentication to protect my work. The crisis occurred sometime around June 28 when the Gentoo Linux team noticed that they were unable to affect changes on their Github repository. It turns out that some amateur hackers had guessed a possibly weak password to begin with and logged everyone on the team out of their account. The hacker then went on to wreak havoc on the Github repository. As far as I know the issue is as of now resolved. The Gentoo team did so with commendable effort and emaculate timing. However, they did not have a sufficient backed up or cloned version of their repository and so they had to go through with a fine-tooth comb and fix any errors that were found. I also do not believe that Gentoo images downloaded elsewhere were as badly effected, however, users who cloned the Git repository recently had been told to reclone the Git after July 4 th . This was just one ...

Brave, a browser started in May of 2015, is a Chromium-based browser with elements that resemble something else. The browser offers tracking and ad protection by default, however this is customizable, complete with on/off toggle for user convenience. What is more, Brave uses tokens to pay for surfing as well. Brave uses a very nice looking dashboard, however, as it becomes more Chromium related, the browser is expected to take a different turn in the later part of 2018 or so. Brave also offers HTTPS conversion which converts any Http site to Https automatically if there is such an equivalent. Brave recently started using Tor with their private browsing windows, this adds more privacy and anonymity online. It is a for-profit browser, but the company makes its money by sending users its own ads in place of ads by google or other companies. Brave protects user identity and allows users to continue to help support content creators and web developers alike. Unlike Chrome,...

Open Wifi is the rage these days. From quaint cafe’s to regular, run-of-the-mill family restaurants, Wifi is left free and open to the public. This can be both a good and bad thing. Convenience is that you can update that app on your phone that you might have otherwise missed out on in your busy schedule. You can also share that favorite youtube video with your family, but you wouldn’t leave an open account on your home router would you? Open Wifi uses no encryption, so your data is basically free range. Even using secure HTTPS can be intercepted by someone with a descent understanding of the networking. Then why do we use these unsafe networks so much? How can we prevent or protect our devices and or traffic from being compromised? Stay away from clear text or HTTP only. While it may not be a big deal for just going to a random site to read an article or look at pictures, HTTP is unsecured and now is being deprecated by most websites in favor of more modern standards ...

The list of browsers following Chrome’s lead is rather slim when compared with Firefox, at least in Linux. Firefox Quantum was the latest attempt by Mozilla to increase speed and productivity of the browser, but recent updates tended to break that experience for some users. Pale Moon 27 is a great browser for people that like simple, but what about users who want more extensions and themes, who want a browser with more relevant web features? Enter Basilisk. Basilisk is a browser based off of more recent firefox code, but on a completely different rendering engine called Goanna. Goanna is the same engine behind Pale Moon, but Pale Moon and Basilisk run on different version schemes and a separate version of code. Basilisk supports a similar look and style to pre-photon Firefox with a look similar to v29 to v56 while Pale Moon is running an older v38 ESR code base with pre-australis look and feel. Basilisk has a more comprehensive list of usable extensions as opposed to Pale Moon ri...

On June 25 th in a forum post, Pale Moon lead developer “Moonchild” as he is called, issued a statement about possible version 28 release times. The current estimated release date is not known, but is thought that it will be some time in Autumn. Pale Moon 28 is supposed to bring more web standards support amongst websites today that version 27 just doesn’t have. The new version will be a milestone release and is taking part of its code from the new project Pale Moon developers had in mind with their other browser in development(Basilisk).  Basilisk is a continuation of the XUL platform for their addons. Right now it doesn’t appear extensively populated on the Pale Moon add ons page, however, this will most likely change when their presence grows among forums and communities. When new and opensource developers take Pale Moon as a serious project, they will start working on useful extensions and themes for Pale Moon. Pale Moon is still based in part off of old Mozilla code, ...

Manjaro has a new stable update on the way. Some things I liked about the beta build of this release, it’s smooth and fast. Everything seems to work out of the box. The biggest gripe I can say, the themes. Now I haven’t done a lot of extensive testing with 18.0 as of late, lots of sidetracking going on. I did find a few quirks getting my scripts up and running in the live version if I recall. I have been noticing a lot of troublesome updates in my testing branch from updates on the way to 18.0. The current version is still 17.1.0 and most of the changes I believe are more under the hood than aesthetics. There appears to be a lot of library and driver support updates on the way. Pam and Pinentry recently updated in testing which has been giving me a fit. Each time I play video on VLC something throws me back to the login screen at random. One system had VLC totally stop working. My solution was to revert to a more modest player on both systems at this time. Parole Media playe...

Hi everyone! Been a busy week. At first, I was coming up with plenty of ideas of things to write about, plenty of ideas for new features to add in to my scripts, but things just didn’t go quite as planned. While I did get some work done, I was interrupted by all the machines in the house that were updated becoming paper weights literally before my eyes. The culprit turned out to be an upstream Mesa update from Arch Linux. Mesa deals with video graphics and uses Wayland as a dependancy. Wayland is the new and future successor to x-server. X-server is the X11 system that gives you a graphical experience within Linux. X-server has a process that can actually run in the background without you even being in the desktop and so this is why it is recommended, when installing or unstalling drivers via command line or tty, that you issue the command stopx. X can even have a negative impact on Lightdm performance as well. After issuing all of the updates I rebooted my machine to only b...

Bodhi Linux, which is currently at version 4.5.0(Possibly final build based on 16.04 which just includes updates to packages and the like), will be releasing alpha images of 5.0.0 soon. This new version will be based on Ubuntu 18.04 and will update the default kernel along with nearly all the libraries. As for the desktop itself, it is still unclear as to whether Jeff, the lead developer, will decide to update that package yet. The current version is stable enough, but still it will be interesting to see where 5.0.0 goes. Many users of Ubuntu are concerned with the opt out style model Ubuntu was trying to press to retrieve user diagnostics and telemetry data. This is a privacy concern, however, it is unclear as to the details of whether Bodhi will have anything like that in the Ubiquity installer or not. Linux Mint has decided that they will not be doing that in version 19. Currently, information on the matter is rather sparse as the lead developer, Jeff Hoogland onl...