keyboard problems in guest of 64bit Linux host behind vnc [Solved]
Friday, August 30. 2013
I have a problem with the keyboard mapping in virtualbox guests.
I will quickly sumarise how we handle keyboard translation on X11 hosts. In fact we have two algorithms for doing this. The first one, which is the preferred one, is to try to determine whether one of the two standard X.Org PC mappings is in use (kbd or evdev). We do this by checking the keycodes of certain keys that are not likely to vary - like the left side modifier keys, tab, the first eight function keys - and seeing if they match one of the well-known mappings (and we do check for swapped ctrl and caps lock). If they do, we use that mapping, but certain custom keyboard layouts, like Neo and probably like your Dvorak layout, defeat this.
The second algorithm originally came from Wine, although a lot of work has gone into it since then. It works by reading the symbols attached to each keycode and comparing them to standard national layouts, and working back from there to the keyboard mapping. This is needed in particular for Sunray and I believe for X over ssh and VNC (although I should probably add Sunray to the standard layouts).
So this confirmed my suspicion that virtualbox performed some weird voodoo based on what it sees as the keyboard settings. And while all looked well judging from typing on the machine, both in a ssh shell or via vnc and X, I found rather strange tables with Xmodmap -pke .
I created a valid xmodmap on my desktop box, shortened it to only contain those keys I actually need and use and put that into a file on the remote machine.
I edited the ~/.vnc/xstartup script of the user who runs the vnc server to include the line
xmodmap custom-modmap
at the top. And that made the difference.
I will not pretend to understand how things actually work together, my desktop, the remote machine, the xmodmap all use and are set to a German keyboard and still virtualBox now starts and presents an English keyboard to the guest machines. But this is something the guests are happy to remap to German and at least each keypress results in a key event now.
Notizblock encryption
Saturday, August 24. 2013
Paar Verweise, die ich letzlich sah und die ich eben mal zugänglich festhalten will.
Ein einsichtsvoller und wohlinformierter Artikel der New York Times über eine berliner Filmemacherin, einen brasilianischen Journalisten und einen SysAd aus Hawai.
Register mit einer Aufstellung von Ratschlägen, wie man Briefe un-mit-gelesen einem Empfänger übermitteln kann.
Und hier ein Tip, wie man Katzenbilder aus dem Net noch etwas aufwerten kann
Ein gpg-howto und noch ein weiteres
Kontact, Categories, Groups and syncing to ownCloud
Thursday, August 22. 2013
I used to store my calendars, contacts, tasks at Google and sync them from there to my android phone and thunderbird/lightning on different machines running linux or win*. For a number of reasons I decided to deGoogle my data habbits and have migrated to an ownCloud server.
Google contact has a rather easy to use way of grouping contacts, actually it's more like tagging the contacts to belong to a group. Android supports those groups out of the box. Thunderbird, with the help of an addon, syncs those contacts and automagically has a mail list for each of the groups defined in Google contacts. Ease of use and clarity for data handling, each contact has the info about which mail distribution list will apply directly as a property with itself. I like that.
OwnCloud, at least with the last few versions of it's 5er, does it more or less as well as Google does. The interface may not be that refined and handy, but the structures and functionality is there, which I appreciate a lot.
Syncing to android requires 2 apps (cardDav-sync and calDAV-sync) costing few € each and then everything works nicely like it ever did. Fun.
Syncing to Thunderbird's addressbook needs an addon which, unfortunately, is crippled in the way it handles mail lists. Categories are synced and recognized, I can even edit them conveniently. But there is no automatic and no decent manual way to build a mail list based on the categories of the synced contacts. There is a modal window that expects me to type email addresse in order to add them to the list. Type. No filter select, or at least drag and drop. Type.
This is the moment that I start to check Kontact again. Not the first time, KDE on arch is my main desktop for a year and it was KDE on debian before (less fun).
Connecting Kontact to ownCloud is very easy, actually comfortable. Syncing the contacts works smooth and fast, including the contact photos. KAddressbook shows me a flat list of names but there is a context menue which allows me to add fields for display and sorting. My pet property, Categories, is not included though.
Double click on a contact entry opens a editor dialog with a field for the categories, comfortable to select from a list of all existing values, if I decide to create a new one it is synced to ownCloud minutes later. Very nice indeed.
But try to create a group and populate it and there is a time tunnel back into the computational stone ages! There is a New Group dialog which is modal and no drag & drop is possible. Select a number of contacts, New Group -> the very same dialog, no 'selection awareness' and adding the selected entries to the new group. No!
The dialog expects me to type the name, at least offering an input-aware selection as I start to type. Seriously no fun!
So:
- is there any known way to automatically sync groups according to category settings?
- or at least, any known way to populate groups via drag&drop of selected entries?
- or, at the very least, any docu, examples, helpful sites on how to get and set the relevant data, methods etc to script my own way with qdbus-qt4 ?
I can
qdbus-qt4 org.kde.kaddressbook /kaddressbook/MainWindow_1 org.kde.KMainWindow.activateAction akonadi_contact_group_create
but i just opens the modal editor window and thus gets me nowhere.
PJ im roten Kleid, Kremlastrologie und "Mehr Demokratie wagen!"
Wednesday, August 21. 2013
groklaw.net ist beendet. Slashdot dazu. heise.
Das andere, wirklich Bittere: wie wir diese Texte jetzt zu lesen lernen. Texte, von denen wir wissen (oder uns denken müssen), dass sie unter einer gag order verfasst wurden, Texte, die die Zwangsumstände, unter denen sie verfasst werden, nicht benennen dürfen. Wie man die Einbruchsgeschichte als Metapher der konkreten Vorgeschichte der Seiteneinstellung lesen kann, wie womöglich die zentrale Aussage ihres Textes die ist, die nicht darin steht: es steht nicht darin, dass sie keinen national security letter bekommen hat. Und das würde sie doch geschrieben haben, wenn es so wäre und sie doch weiss, dass jeder nun sowas vermutet...
Passworte in /etc/shadow
Monday, August 19. 2013
Ich bekam doch einen Schreck, als ich auf einem Rechner, der seit sarge oder so immer debian-stable hatte, bei einer Kontrolle darauf stiess, dass die Passworte in /etc/shadow nur mit md5 gehasht wurden.
Der Sache nachgehend fand ich einen Thread in den Debian-User Foren, der dank eines hartnäckig nachfragenden Users eine recht erhellende Diskussion zum Thema hat.
Bei einem Eintrag in shadows der Form:
webdb8_usr:$1$Ksmg|oP`$9S1FToADihC6K4o2cifd50:15672:0:99999:7:::steht $1 für den Hash-algorithmus md5, zwischen den beiden nächsten $ stehen 8 Zeichen salt und dem folgt dann das Hash.
$5 wäre SHA-256 und $6 SHA-512
/etc/pam.d/common-passwordHier fand ich:
password required pam_unix.so nullok obscure min=4 max=16 md5password required pam_unix.so nullok obscure min=8 sha512 rounds=65519 
