Jun. 5, 2008
I have created a small workaround for the VERY annoying results of the introduction of openssl-vulnkey. Having to enter my ssl key passwords four times before establishing a OpenVPN connection and not being able to use the nm-applet at all wasn’t great.
The patch adds a key to a whitelist ones it has verified it as safe and does not do any further blacklist tests for any keys located in the whiltelist. The patch is not flawless and should only be seen as a temporary workaround until a permanent solution from the vendor becomes available. It has several shortcomings, such as only being able to add keys to the whitelist if run as root.
The patch is available at the launchpad site here:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+bug/230197/
Posted by patrik in Ubuntu | No Comments
May. 20, 2008
Last weeks OpenSSL issues in Debian based distributions didn’t go unnoticed for most of us. The introduction of openssl-vulnkey screwed up the Network Manager based OpenVPN GUI as it does no longer properly supply the underlying daemon with the passkey correctly.
Running OpenVPN from the command line now asks for the password three times as seen below:
Tue May 20 19:37:12 2008 /usr/sbin/openssl-vulnkey -q /home/user/openvpn/key.pem
Enter pass phrase for /home/user/openvpn/key.pem:
Enter pass phrase for /home/user/openvpn/key.pem:
Enter Private Key Password:
There is a incorrect but working workaround suggested at Ubuntu launchpad:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+bug/230197/
It suggests replacing openssl-vulnkey that is intended for checking x509 certificates with openvpn-vulnkey used for checking OpenVPN shared static keys. Replacing openssl-vulnkey with /bin/true works just as good as the suggested workaround at launchpad but obviously removes the intended check for blacklisted keys as well.
So check your keys using openssl-vulnkey, replace any keys needing replacing, make a backup of openssl-vulnkey and replace it with /bin/true TEMPORARLY. If your interested in monitoring the activity of the bug, become a subscriber at the link above. If not wait for the security update and make sure to apply it ones it’s released.
Posted by patrik in Ubuntu | No Comments
May. 9, 2008
I’ve been looking at the sweet small Asus Eee PC’s for quite some time now. I have had a hard time deciding whether to wait for the 900-series or buy the ones that are available in stores now. Giving it some thought I decided to wait for the new ones AND buy one now 
What can I say it’s a small pink beauty and so far I love it.
Posted by patrik in Ubuntu | No Comments
Apr. 30, 2008
fails miserably. I’m guessing other distributions shipping with the 2.6.24 suffer from the same problem. The trouble starts when the installer tries to build the vmxnet network driver.
The error I’m getting is:
In file included from /tmp/vmxnet-only/vmxnet.c:36:
/tmp/vmxnet-only/vm_basic_types.h:161: error: conflicting types for ‘uintptr_t’
I found the following web page that hosts a number of patches and pre-patched sources solving the problem. http://projects.tuxx-home.at/?id=vmware_updates
Posted by patrik in Ubuntu | No Comments
Apr. 29, 2008
Yet another tool that does not work out of the box on Hardy. If you’re experiencing the following error message
/usr/lib/vmware-server-console/bin/vmware-server-console: /usr/lib/vmware-server-console/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1: version `GCC_3.4′ not found (required by /usr/lib/libcairo.so.2)
Well… simply run the following command (at your own risk) and you should be all set
sudo rm -f /usr/lib/vmware-server-console/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/libgcc_s.so.1