Debian | DistributedInformation

Oct 24 2008

TWiki 4.2.3 JeOS Virtual Machine

Tag: debian, enterprise, new, open source, perl, twiki, twikiapplication, wiki — Sven Dowideit @ 12:25 pm

TWiki 4.2 JeOS VM

mirror 1 460MB (USA) TWiki 4.2.3, (does not include VMware):

Easy installation on Windows, Linux and OSX!

Trivial upgrades of TWiki and TWiki Plugins

Summary: This package enables you to quickly and easily install a pre-configured TWiki 4.2 ’software appliance’ on Windows, by using the free VMware Player or VMware Server - like another computer running within your computer. This generally performs better than a normal WindowsInstallCookbook approach and is easier to install than IndigoPerlCookbook (takes just 5 minutes, a bit like installing a hard disk that has TWiki and Linux pre-installed). Although running TWiki on Linux on top of Windows may seem complicated, it’s actually much simpler than installing TWikiOnWindows - no TWiki or Linux knowledge is needed to get a working TWiki installation!

This uses TWiki VM 4.2.3 released on 12 September 2008. It is installed using SvenDowideit’s fosiki TWiki debian package repository to make upgrades, and installation of TWiki Plugins (with external dependencies) easy.

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Aug 25 2008

firefox 3.x on debian amd64

Tag: debian, javascript — Sven Dowideit @ 1:50 pm

I’ve been running a firefox 3.0 pre-release build for ages now, and finally thought I’d upgrade - (it turns out) mozilla do not provide 64 bit binaries. The i686 build that you can download from getfirefox.org does not work on my debian amd64 system - but not everything is lost.

As I’m a developer, I’m reasonably happy to play with nightly builds - and so - http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/ has what I need - today its firefox-3.1a2pre.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.bz2.

Unziped into my non-debian firefox dir, and runs seemingly fine, except that the firefox addins won’t run, as they are scared of firefox versions that they have not been tested on

That too can be solved - edit the application.ini file, and replace the Version=3.1a2pre with Version=3.0.1 or whatever the release is that your addons are willing to work on.

so far, only VMWare’s addon won’t run - perhaps I need to set the Version lower, as it worked on Minefield 3.0pre.

http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=iceweasel&searchon=names&suite=testing&section=all tells me that 3.0.1 is in amd64 debian testing since July 2008

VMWare’s addon to give console access won’t run in the 3.0.1 debian version either - talk about disappointing. The 3.1 nightly build seems to feel faster too, so I suspect I’ll be running that most of the time, and will look to migrate away from VMWare over time.

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Aug 20 2008

ever had Perl CPAN not work on your debian, even though you installed make etc?

Tag: debian, dtrace, enterprise, new, perl, solaris, twiki — Sven Dowideit @ 4:29 pm

CPAN, while incredibly useful, can be a pain, if you forget that you need to re-configure it after installing essential tools.

For example, if you make the mistake of setting up a basic, non-development Debian virtual machine, configure CPAN, try to use it, and on seeing ‘make’ errors like (from install Bundle::CPAN of all things) :
Running make test Can't test without successful make Running make install make had returned bad status, install seems impossible Running install for module Compress::Raw::Zlib Running make for P/PM/PMQS/Compress-Raw-Zlib-2.012.tar.gz Is already unwrapped into directory /root/.cpan/build/Compress-Raw-Zlib-2.012 Has already been processed within this session Running make test Can't test without successful make Running make install make had returned bad status, install seems impossible Running make for P/PM/PMQS/IO-Compress-Zlib-2.012.tar.gz Is already unwrapped into directory /root/.cpan/build/IO-Compress-Zlib-2.012 Has already been processed within this session Running make test Can't test without successful make Running make install make had returned bad status, install seems impossible

cpan>

You install make apt-get update ; apt-get install build-essential…, only to continue to see the same errors wizz past….

CPAN really truly needs to realise that the make settings are mis configured, and tell you.

What you need to do, is to tell your cpan about it by running:
cpan> o conf init

OR, if you’ve not yet messed (configured) up your cpan, install build-essential first.

And while you’re contemplating using cpan, think hard about trying dh-make-perl instead

Ideally, CPAN should be able to realise that it can’t call make if it does not know where it is - and point this fact out, rather than making it appear as though the package being installed has an issue.

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Aug 16 2008

Enterprise Wiki - Debian TWiki repository updated to TWiki 4.2.2

Tag: debian, enterprise, new, twiki — Sven Dowideit @ 4:17 pm

I’ve just updated the Experimental TWiki and Plugins repository. It now contains TWiki 4.2.2 and 226 Plugins, Contribs and Skins that you can simply apt-get install

To use them, add the following 2 lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://distributedinformation.com/experimental/ experimental main contrib deb-src http://distributedinformation.com/experimental/ experimental main contrib

then type
apt-get update
to update the available packages.

you can now see all 226 packages with apt-cache search twiki-

and install (assuming you don’t have twiki installed yet)

apt-get install apache2 twiki

Now that I’ve added external dependancies to the repository, complex TWiki Plugin like ImageGalleryPlugin is as easy as apt-get install twiki-imagegalleryplugin and then enabling it via configure.

etch:~# apt-get install twiki-imagegalleryplugin Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree... Done The following extra packages will be installed: defoma gsfonts libfreetype6 libgraphics-magick-perl libgraphicsmagick1 libice6 libjasper-1.701-1 libjpeg62 liblcms1 libmagick9 libpng12-0 libsm6 libtiff4 libwmf0.2-7 libx11-6 libx11-data libxau6 libxdmcp6 libxext6 libxml2 libxt6 perlmagick x11-common Suggested packages: defoma-doc psfontmgr x-ttcidfont-conf dfontmgr libfreetype6-dev graphicsmagick-dbg libjasper-runtime liblcms-utils libwmf-bin Recommended packages: libft-perl gs-gpl gs xml-core The following NEW packages will be installed: defoma gsfonts libfreetype6 libgraphics-magick-perl libgraphicsmagick1 libice6 libjasper-1.701-1 libjpeg62 liblcms1 libmagick9 libpng12-0 libsm6 libtiff4 libwmf0.2-7 libx11-6 libx11-data libxau6 libxdmcp6 libxext6 libxml2 libxt6 perlmagick twiki-imagegalleryplugin x11-common 0 upgraded, 24 newly installed, 0 to remove and 15 not upgraded. Need to get 11.2MB of archives. After unpacking 25.4MB of additional disk space will be used.

You will still need to use configure to enable Plugins.

Please report your experiences to me - bugs, gripes, you name it - its a work in progress. and I need your help!

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Jul 25 2008

Debian TWiki repository now with 212 TWiki Plugins, Contribs, Skins and more.

Tag: debian, enterprise, environment, new, twiki, twikiapplication, wiki — Sven Dowideit @ 3:09 pm

I’ve just updated the Experimental TWiki and Plugins repository. It now contains TWiki 4.2.0 and 212 Plugins, Contribs and Skins that you can simply apt-get install

then type
apt-get update
to update the available packages.

you can now see all 212 packages with apt-cache search twiki-

and install (assuming you don’t have twiki installed yet)

apt-get install apache2 twiki

and TWiki Contrib installation is as easy as

apt-get install twiki-bugscontrib

You will still need to use configure to enable Plugins.

Please report your experiences to me - bugs, gripes, you name it - its a work in progress. and I need your help!

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Jun 29 2008

defense against the dark arts? (Cross site scripting and Cross Site forgery)

Tag: debian, enterprise, twiki, twikiapplication — Sven Dowideit @ 12:12 am

I was having a discussion with someone on IRC about how TWiki is vulnerable to Cross-site scripting and Cross-site request forgery, and we realized that there are 2 possible approaches to securing TWiki effectively (both requiring a unique magic number for all URLs):

add a pre process to the TWiki::UI system, requiring a valid and unique magic, and a post process step between rendering and output to the browser
use a small proxy system between TWiki and browsers to add and validate the magic

1. is actually still risky as all scripts still are able to output directly to the browser using a =print= statement, thus giving the user urls that may not have a necessary magic in the url, or similarly for AddOns that persist in not using resthandlers.

whereas 2. abstracts the security from the application server, in much the same way as it is for ssl - goodness all round.

So - I wonder if there is such a proxy already?

There are also massive performance reasons why you should always have a proxy between browsers and heavy application servers like TWiki - this too could do with filling out.Securing TWiki is not as simple as converting all actions to POST (ie using proper REST / HTTP) because there are too many legacy conveniences, allowing GET URL’s to act upon the data. But, by delegating the securing of the transactions to an external wrapper, I think we can avoid these flaws.
see Wikipedia on Cross Site Scripting and Cross-site request forgery

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