Diary Import August 1999

31st august 1999

Had a long conference with Reyk, who showed me some of the
most
interesting security sites on the net. Thx, buddy. Winking

Compiled 2.2.12 for www.stun.de and rebooted.
Compiled tripwire fresh for stun.de and core dumping seems
gone.

Wrote an user dump to html converter for firewall-1. Hmm.. beauty
!

30th august 1999

Tom & Jerry marathon on Cartoon Network… and I have to work.
Sad

Tripwire is dumping core all the time, debugging says something
like
invalid inode or os… maybe I should repair my filesystem soon
???

Wrote a new firewall script to dump and log the usage of every
object
configured on the firewall. This helps to keep track of unused
objects.

Set up a new database for andys.stun.de which holds all information
on
Asia Shops as well as Japanese Restaurants and Sushi Bars around
Munich. Happy))

Cleaned up the bathroom…. uh I hate this work…. my back
hurts….. Sad(

No mail from Aya yet… hmmm… Heiki ?

Compiled 2.2.12 for my local machine, but not yet restarted.

29th august 1999

More cleaning up in my room. Boy it was just right in time…..
Winking

Installed the ready-at-all tripwire.rpm on stun.de and setup an
own
virtual host for the freshmeat mirror.
http://freshmeat.stun.de
Also installed rpm2html for documentation purposes.

Have you ever heard rsync when syncing 100MB of small 1kb files
over
100MBit and on a raid1 array Happy)) WOW, what sound…..
I thought it would be hailing outside LaughDDD

Screwed my handy dustbuster, and installed the power supply more
far
away. Cables under the carpet, I’ll have to watch my next
visitor
if (s)he’s shaking. Happy))

28th august 1999

Completely fascinated by the new video driver 2.0 playing around
with
webcam and almost any TV-program displayed at once in a
netscape
window. Updated within the image, so no page reloading ! WOW
!

Updated the whole perl package, but the newest GD still wont build.
Sad

Webcam is active again, and will transfer an instant picture
on
every diary upload. I hope that I smile on that shots Laugh.
Plus I set up the possibility to see me live as long as I’m
connected,
just click on webcam on the right, to see if I’m online and
which IP address my server is currently linked to.

(Hey Aya, how’s about videoconferencing ? Happy
But I think PHS is too slow….) Sad

Try “vidcap | xbgset stdin” and you can watch TV as your background
image.
A simple infinite while do loop brings you almost satisfying
flow.

27th august 1999

Developed a new perl script dumping the usage date of each
firewall
object. That way it should be possible to detect old unused
objects.

Big party at work because of three of my coworkers became
father
last month.

Finally discovered the beauty in programming perl.
There are so many modules around. Even for PalmPilot…. ts
Happy

Started a mirror of freshmeat.net via the rsync service,
I think we’ll activate this for linux.stun.de.

26th august 1999

New perlscript dumping firewall-rules with date of last use.

Developed some concepts and new thoughts about network
security.

Discovered the Kernel-HTTP-daemon kHTTPd which was included
in the 2.3.14 linux source. Interesting developement.

25th august 1999

Added 3D pie graph to the firewall packet report filter.

2.2.12 is released, finally. But no time to review.

Played around with lspci and wrote a frontend for
admin.stun.de.

Swimming was very funny today. So much tired we almost sink.
After that Reyk and me had dinner in a greek restaurant and
after a little shock in a thai karaoke bar. Happy))) That was funny….

24th august 1999

Big bughunting in timecard-reader software. Ate up all my
time.

Bought 8kg differnt kinds of meat today, and spent the
evening
cutting into portions and freezing them.

Aya’s package arrived today, but has gone back to the post office
for
pickup because I worked to long ? to early ? at all ?
Happy)) I think latter one.

Found my lost photos from my London trip, together with Aya,
in my parents house Happy I knew it.
Will stick them tonight in my album.

Linus seems to be a little bit unhappy on the 2.2.12
suggestion
of Alan, because he had to deliver a third revision already.
Happy

23rd august 1999

Tracked some serious mail delivery problems between two
firewalls.

Rewrote my fw-scripts and move the ftp calls (with netrc)
completely
inside the perl script using Net::FTP.

Coded the boogie players index page. Now dynamically from within
MySQL.

22nd august 1999

Tried to set up an own voicebox for Aya, but I couldn’t find
out why my second ISDN line service-type doesn’t match.
Pure configuration chaos….

Updated some of the new boogie pages and added more menus.
The event calendar is now in the same colour design.

Setting up a new homepage for japanese (or generally asian)
restaurants, bars, shops and so on.

21st august 1999

Completely redesigned my corner of the flat, and it looks
like
more space after throwing away some old books and stuff.

The boogie woogie event calendar is now up and running,
anyway
the server is still OFFLINE, sorry.

20th august 1999

My firewall log check scripts are running perfectly it seems, at
work.

Set up some of the RC5 clients to my newly installed keyproxy
server,
seti is still not working with authentication… Can it be so
hard….

Compiled (partly) the newest ISDN4K utilities, but there seem
to be a lot of conflicts.
Anyway is again up and running.

Had serious problems to poll my mail, there’s obviously a
problem
with big mails at netsurf ? Timeout or something ?

Finished the day at Shananigans Irish Pub together with Tom,
checking out some different ciders.

19th august 1999

Installed and experimented with tripwire, wow, almost what I’ve
been
looking for. A security tool to index your files and check
integrity
access and every kind of modification.

After long time waiting for the kernel 2.2.12 to be released,
(2.2.11 has some nice bugs) I couldn’t stand it anymore.
It seems Linus is busy, no time for the last review, so I decided
to
reboot my machine to 2.2.11. BIG MISTAKE.
The whole ISDN subsystem is redesigned, so I have to get that 8
MB
TGZ but first reboot to 2.2.10. Great…
This may take some time…

18th august 1999

Got my ACE administration software today, so I’m now the master of
the
(universe Happy ) securid card distribution.
Nice job, and one more database which has to be in sync,
manually,
with the firewall-1s.

Started our weekly swimming today, together with Reyk.
It’s really fantastic for relaxion after a long and hard working
day.

17th august 1999

Traced back some weird IP packets which should pass our
firewall,
but which are blocked somewhere before or after…. access
lists…

Played with the Firewall Configuration Tool FCT and gave up
the
graphical(although web-based) desktop after a lot of
mysterious
blocking. IMHO the best way to configure FCT is, by hand in
the
flatfiles, and after that use the web frontend to control and
for documentation.

Discovered again that a lot of mails from Aya are missing…
Sad(
The funny thing is that some parts are missing because of
wrong
addressing others because of forwarding problems.
We now always send CC’s but what matters if the receiver is
wrong or mails getting lost while forwarded.

16th august 1999

Finally got my own telephone at work. Yippie !!!!!! Happy)))

Discovered a wrong access list which blocked our firewall.

Played around with the nighty FCT firewall configuration tool for
Linux.
WOW ! But anyway you have to know what you’re doing….

Calculated how much money will be left per month for Aya and
me…
Sad(( … doesn’t look good.

15th august 1999

Updated the linux kernel grapher on linux.stun.de and added
some
comments for all series, as well as included the 2.1 and 2.0
trees.

Updated the last modified file viewer on admin.stun.de,
directories
are now linked for easier navigation.

Experimented with the IP-chains package.

14th august 1999

A food-shopping and cooking day. Anyway being lazy.

Enjoying the flintstone week on cartoon network.

Compiled 2.2.11 for www.stun.de and zuse1, discovered some IP
problems
which should be urgently fixed in 2.2.12.

Downloded the newest Portaloo and played with the news
collector,
which is still not able to handle proxies.

13th august 1999

Developed a first version of the name concept for our
firewalls.

Reyk visited me today at my new company. Thanks ! Nice to have
guests.
no further comment, we both know better Winking
We also decided to go swimming from next wednesday on, every
week
at night. So I hope to stay in shape for Aya Winking

Met with Reyk, Babsi, Adriane and Birte at Shananigans Irish
Pub.
Hey, Aya, Adriane is going to Japan for 1 year from next april
on,
so you still have a chance to talk japanese to her !

12th august 1999

News from the RedHat IPO.
The stocks running higher and higher, with a starting value
of 12$ they’re now up to 80$ which lists them up on place 7 of
the
first day winners top ten.

Installed Apache and PHP3 on my machine at work.
Experimented with gd and dynamic image-creation.

11th august 1999

Today we’ve total solar eclipse in Munich.
Had bad luck because exactly at that time when I wanted to
see
the corona the clouds covered my sight, just 1km farer
everything
was perfect. At least I could experience 2 minutes nighttime.
GREAT ! Happy))
it must have been amazing to see the elephants in the zoo
starting
shaking and the birds stop singing.
So the next one will be better. And 2081 should be possible
if
Aya takes much care for me. Winking)))))

10th august 1999

Wrote a password change script in perl, which allows complex
user administration via web-interface too.

9th august 1999

Improved the firewall report script, and collected statistics
on denied packets.
Searching for an Apache user-administration tool.
Found nothing.

Some friends of our family visited us this week to see the
solar eclipse on wednesday.

8th august 1999

Met Thomas who’s right back from 1 week holiday in tents.
And the bad news, someone crushed his car.

7th august 1999

Another shopping day. Bought wardrobe and shoe-board.

6th august 1999

Novell is still pursuing me, and I had to join a Y2K meeting,
today.
Converted the FW-1 Docu of yesterday into excel….
Yeah, after lots of drugs I can agree that too, that MS is
much better for searching and documentation than HTML can
ever be. I wonder if they ever heard of Searchengines.
We’ll see if there’s a way to make these documentation
autoprocessing some day. But without MS I guess/hope. Happy

After discovering fwrules4.pl, done the docu again.
This time, including Icons and links of all objects,
so you can see which group-members and parameters belong
together.

5th august 1999

The firewalls entries made yesterday didn’t help, but someone
in NYC felt responsible for the firewall configuration on
their
side. Happy))) Baehhhhhhhhh…. Laugh

Started a support query for FW1-Documentation-Tools.
(no response.)
After a while searching the web I discovered, fwrules2.pl
which delivers a HTML output of almost every configuration
dialog within FW-1.

4th august 1999

Yet no Outlook working at work, because of a wrong order
in our SAP management. Great Sad
Anyway, one more day, enjoying a MS-free life.

Coded a Y2K counter in JavaScript for the companies webpage.

Changed some firewall entries.

3rd august 1999

Read much about firewalling concepts and comparisions between
different firewalls and proxies.

2nd august 1999

My first day working for the new company.

A little bit stressy, nothing is coordinated for me,
no entrancecard, no timecard, no email, no server-id
working. No telephone and no one has time to care for.
Great work, I’m impressed.

Used the “spare” time to tune up my new computer at work.
Installed Netscape/Perl/PilotDesk/FW1-GUI aso.

1st august 1999

Played with my camera which is now supported in gphoto.
A lot of pictures extracted and converted into HTML
galleries.

Configured the PGP OpenKeyServer on www.stun.de, and it WORKS !
Yeah !
(Linked the howtos into the admin tree.)

Prepared everything for entering my new company tomorrow.