• The Author – Bart Busschots

  

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Until Crypt::HSXKPasswd comes out of beta, I’m not going to upload it to CPAN, so until then, the betas need to be manually installed. You can get the latest release of the library by downloading the appropriate .tar.gz file from GitHub.

For Perl regulars, the process is likely to be familiar, because the module is packaged using the very popular Module::Build. The process is quite straight forward, but there are a few potential pitfalls for the uninitiated.

For quick reference, here are the commands needed to install the module:

perl Build.PL
sudo ./Build installdeps
./Build
./Build test
sudo ./Build install

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It’s been a while since I released a new version of XKPasswd.pm, the open source Perl module that powers the secure memorable password generator at www.xkpasswd.net. The main reason for the big gap is that I needed to learn some new skills to get the code to where I wanted it to be. There were three main problems I wanted solved:

1. To get wide adoption, the Module needs to be available via CPAN
2. The module needs unicode support to deal with non-English languages
3. It needs to be easy to edit and tweak a config with the www.xkpasswd.net web interface, and then use it in your scripts.

While solving those problems, I also took the opportunity to tidy up some other odds and ends in the code base. It’s not that code was broken, it just that a few parts of it had a bit of a fishy smell – it seemed like there was probably a better way to do that, and there was!

So, here’s a summary of what’s changed from the the point of view of a user of the Module:

• The Packaging – the module has a new name, and is now packaged with Module::Build, so it’s easier to install, and ready for distribution via CPAN.
• Unicode Support – if it’s a unicode character, you can use it while generating passwords.
• Redesigned Word Sources – more bundled with the module, and easier to create your own.
• Redesigned Sources of Randomness – more bundled with the module, a better default, and easier to create you own.
• A switch to Named Arguments (in both the constructor and functional interface).

I’ve put a lot of time and effort into developing this entirely free and open source module. If you find it useful, please consider making a donation:

*Download Beta of Crypt::HSXKPasswd via GitHub*

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This post is part 34 of 39 in the series Taming the Terminal

In the previous instalment we finished a five-part series on SSH. Before moving on, lets take a moment to step back and look at the big-picture. The five SSH instalments are all part of the now long-running series on networking. We have been working our way through the networking stack since instalment 23. We started at the bottom of the stack, and have worked our way up. We are not exploring protocols in the Application Layer.

In this instalment we’re moving on from SSH to HTTP, the protocol that powers the world wide web.

Before we look at some HTTP-related terminal commands, we need a basic understanding of how HTTP works, so that’s what this instalment is all about.

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This post is part 33 of 39 in the series Taming the Terminal

This is the final SSH instalment. So far we’ve learned how to securely execute terminal commands on remote computers, how to securely copy files across the network using SSH, how to add both security and convenience to both those operations with SSH key pairs, and how to tunnel just about anything through SSH. In this final instalment we’ll look two approaches for creating SSH bookmarks, SSH config files, and SSH GUIs.

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This post is part 32 of 39 in the series Taming the Terminal

This is the fourth SSH instalment. So far we’ve learned how to securely execute terminal commands on remote computers, how to securely copy files across the network using SSH, and how to add both security and convenience to both those operations with SSH key pairs.

As we saw in the previous instalment, SSH’s ability to provide a secure connection between two computers can be used in many different ways. In this instalment we’ll learn about three more ways to encapsulate other network traffic within an SSH connection, adding encryption to that traffic.

Running commands and copying files are the kinds of things most people do, so the three SSH instalments to date have been quite generally applicable. That is not the case for this instalment. The three SSH features we’ll be discussing are all very useful to those who need them, but only a minority will have a use for any one of these features. However, even if you don’t need these features today, I would argue that it’s good to know these features exist, because they could well solve a problem you’ll have in the future.

There will be illustrations of the uses for these technologies, but not commands you type into your terminal to play along at home. That makes this an unusual instalment, but I hope you will still find it worthwhile.

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This post is part 31 of 39 in the series Taming the Terminal

In Part 29 of n we learned how to use SSH to execute commands on a remote computer. In the previous instalment we learned how to add security and convenience to SSH connections using SSH key-pairs.

The most important thing SSH provides is an encrypted connection between two computers. As we’ve seen, that encrypted connection can be used to securely issue terminal commands to a remote computer, but that same secured channel can also be used to secure other network connections between computers. In this instalment we’ll look at three different ways of securely copying files between computers through an SSH connection, and in the next instalment we’ll look at tunnelling just about any network connection through an SSH connection.

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This post is part 30 of 39 in the series Taming the Terminal

In the previous instalment we saw how we can use SSH to execute a single command on a remote computer, or, to get a command shell on a remote computer. We also saw how SSH uses host keys to protect us from man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks.

In this instalment we’re going to look at how we can improve both SSH security and convenience with SSH keys.

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I spent of a bit of time tweaking my server backup script this week, and figured there was no reason not to share it with others. This is not the be-all-and-end-all of backup scripts, or the most flexible backup script in the world, it does what I need from a backup script, and nothing more or less! It might meet your needs, or, more likely, it might make a useful starting point for a script that meets your exact needs.

You’ll find the code and the documentation over on my GitHub account.

This post is part 29 of 39 in the series Taming the Terminal

In the previous six instalments we looked in detail at how TCP/IP networks tick. In these instalments we worked our way up from the bottom of the four-layer TCP/IP network model to the top, finishing off with a look at two protocols in the Application Layer at the top of the stack. Those two protocols, DHCP & DNS exist in the top layer, but are different to most other top layer protools in that they can reasonably be described as forming part of the infrastructure of the internet. The email and web protocols may site within the same network layer, but they still rely on DNS to function.

For the remainder of the networking section in this series we’ve moving away from infrastructure-like protocols, and focusing on the user-facing Application Layer protocols. The first of these we’ll be looking at is the Secure Shell, or SSH. This protocol is one of the absolute work-horses of the internet, and a vital tool for all Linux, Unix, and OS X sysadmins.

At it’s simplest level SSH allows you to execute commands on a remote computer, but because it was designed around the concept of a secure tunnel between two systems, SSH has expanded to allow all kinds of advanced features. The least-generous description of this could be that SSH has become a kind of sysadmins fridgeoven. But I don’t buy that, I prefer the alternative interpretation – it simply makes sense not to re-invent the wheel, and to allow as much information as possible to flow throw the secure connection SSH provides between the two end-points.

Today we’re just going to start with the basics, but in future instalments we’ll move on to the more advanced features.

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I’ve just completely re-skinned my IP subnet calculator over at www.subnetcalc.it, hopefully making it much easier on the eye. The original skin was basically the same as the one I used for XKPasswd which is fixed-width and hence very old fashioned. The biggest problem with a fixed-width design is that it doesn’t work well on either large or small screens, which is almost everyone these days!

The new skin is variable-width, so it should scale much better for people. Assuming people like this basic style, my plan is to migrate www.XKPasswd.net to this same basic design. In effect I’m using this new site to beta-test some ideas for XKPasswd.

I’d love to hear any constructive feedback people have.

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